The Book of Death
by Thranx
Summary: Meet M.A.Wyvern, used book dealer with a flair for adventure - what will her next deadly mission bring her: fame and fortune, untimely death, or Snape's embracing arms? Can Snape learn to love? Starts summer after 3rd year. Book lovers read this one!
1. Severus

Ann was a Muggle. What's more, she knew it.  
  
She couldn't defend herself against any curses, couldn't charm a doorknob to save her life, and couldn't transform a single object into something that it wasn't. There was not a single drop of magical blood in her body. But perhaps the only thing magical about her was that despite this she was drawn to it. Some people love to watch football, some people collect rocks, and others go out to art shows. Ann, however, craved magic.  
  
Her fascination started rather simply: Ann was an obsessive bookworm. She haunted used and rare bookstores all over her state and around the country. Family vacations to other countries left the family at a famous landmark, and Ann in its bookstores. She searched the Internet for nonexistent editions and books so rare that even their authors didn't know how to find them. Ann read everything, fiction or non-fiction - it was all the same to her. Fictitious characters had a place in this shy girl's heart as real people did in the average person's heart. What really fascinated Ann, however, were the Magic books.  
  
Her Magic books, as she called them, weren't magic in and of themselves, but they were books about magic. It started when Ann was eleven. She had reached that age where she began to yearn for adult books because now, for the first time, she felt mature and conscious, as if somehow she had just developed into a full human being. A classmate of hers had a grandmother who passed away, and their family was giving away the books piled in the old lady's attic to whoever wanted them before they packed the whole lot off to Goodwill. It would keep them on the good side of the neighbors and be fewer books to pack. It was no skin off their noses. That was how Ann found herself digging through an enormous pile of books that summer, the sweat rolling down her skin making her shirt cling to her back. She had already brought home two boxes of books earlier in the week. She was digging through the books at the very bottom when she came upon, under a mass of old National Geographic magazines, an especially thick and moldy book. It was called Hogwarts, A History.  
  
She devoured it. She was fascinated that someone could have invented a magical school and come up with such a thorough and intricate history. She began to find more books, hidden behind all the other books in the bookstore, tucked in corners during garage sales. She found books about unicorns and Goblin Rebellions and more things than she could have ever thought possible, written as if they were real! Ann wished desperately that they did exist - she wanted the world to be magical and splendid and as real as a book, not the ugly and mundane chaos it really was.  
  
Someone reading about Ann's life might consider it full of well-timed accidents, but this is not so. Most things Ann did, she did them deliberately. And it was by deliberate effort that she did indeed find her way into that magical world she craved.  
  
One day Ann was walking through the city, a book in hand and an eye out for a good place to read it. She was crossing an alley between an empty building and an antique store when she realized she was missing an appointment. She was furious that she hadn't remembered before - Ann wrote everything down in her little planner she carried in her book bag and reviewed each day's agenda before she left the house. She was even more furious when she whipped out the book and found the blank spot over that day's date. She always wrote things down - she would forget them otherwise. She stormed off to her house to try to figure out what she was missing.  
  
She never could find what appointment she was missing. She could have ascribed it to temporary insanity, but Ann had a habit of thinking too much. Well, she called it thinking - her family and teachers called it daydreaming. She remembered all the anti-Muggle protection charms around Hogwarts. She fantasized that she had just run against one of these non- existent spells. Ann loved to daydream - but she couldn't just daydream like ordinary girls: she had to act it out. She dressed up all in black, pretending she was a witch walking through the Muggle streets. She would go into that alley and pretend it was full of Magic bookstores. Or at least maybe find a quiet corner to read.  
  
When she came to the alley, she was pretending so hard that it was at first difficult for her to determine what was real and what was not. Her mind was whirling with all the appointments and important events she was missing, but she went into the alley anyway. Her amazement at the transformation that took place before her eyes soon turned into joy when she realized her dream had come true!  
  
The rest, for Ann, was history. She found her magical world full of all the books she could dream of. She managed to secure jobs for herself in the restaurants and bookstores there so she could have their strange shaped coins to buy more Magic books with. In a way, it was almost disappointing that what she had been reading was real. What a dork - she had been reading other's people textbooks as Muggles read romance novels! But an entire new world of possibilities opened up before her. Her passion for books continued unabated.  
  
Most wizards and witches in the small city knew she was Muggle - she never dressed or acted otherwise - but they smiled at the sweet little girl and allowed her to quietly read her books. They weren't supposed to let Muggles in, but she had somehow gotten in on her own and most figured it was something she'd grow out of and eventually forget anyway. It wasn't until her later teenage years that they stopped smiling. They wanted to use a Memory Charm to make her forget about the Magic marketplace, but from all the books she'd read it would likely deprive her of half her life's memories. Instead she was simply forbid from coming back. It might have ended there had Ann not made another deliberate decision.  
  
There was a myth she had come across again and again, of a hidden book in an underwater cave. It was nothing evil, simply a book written by the ancients on sea monsters that have since become extinct or simply disappeared. It was of extremely great interest to scholars, but it was said to be protected beyond belief with magic that would kill any witch or wizard who searched for it. But it didn't escape Ann's attention that there was no mention at all of protection against Muggles. In fact, after she carefully studied this point, she concluded that there were no anti- Muggle spells protecting it at all, as this would only help those possessing magic to find it. It was a grave risk, perhaps, but not, thought Ann, to those who knew what they were doing. After some scuba- diving lessons and equipment shopping, she waltzed in and grabbed the book, a simple Muggle with a knack for puzzles.  
  
She knew exactly what would happen if she presented the book directly to a Magic bookstore, exactly how much she'd remember of the encounter, and how much she'd be rewarded for her effort. Not very much - not a cent. So she went into business on her own. After the huge success of this first book, which sold for an insanely high amount of galleons, bookstores around the world were more than happy to do business with her. She could be contacted, however, only by owl. She was like magic to book seekers everywhere though - she could find, it seemed, any rare or valuable book commissioned. She had just as much success with Muggle books, operating in the same fashion, although it found it less rewarding in terms of excitement and gold (where else could you bathe in fire, wade through acid, dodge death curses left and right?). To thousands of people around the world, she was simply a name on a card, rumored to actually be an entire corporation instead of the one person printed in boldface type: M. A. Wyvern, Rare Books Dealer.  
  
Ann knew exactly who she was and what she was interested in. If a book caught her attention, she found it - otherwise not. She enjoyed being secluded. She traveled from place to place, rarely picking up the customs and languages of the country she was passing through. She isolated herself on empty prairies, lonely mountains - or in the middle of a city, which was just a good a place as any for hiding. Ann was certainly reclusive and shy, stuttering and mumbling when in the presence of others, but she wasn't necessarily insecure.she told herself. She was Mary Anne Wyvern, lover and seeker of books, student of Magical history, hiker and occasional rock- climber, lover of Moulin Rouge and The Secret Garden, eater of pizza and chocolate. She had no friends, no personal correspondences. Her family, the faces she had lived with for seventeen years, her older sibling now faded voices, meant nothing to her. They quickly passed out of her restricted existence, drifting away on the tide of time.  
  
When she turned twenty-five, her golden birthday, Ann celebrated by reading in her house - alone. She didn't have a single friend, except, perhaps, for Jack, the dark skinny boy she had just adopted.  
  
She had been living on the island less than two months when she realized this boy she had befriended walking between the post office and general market was a wizard. Jack was also a member of a people who regarded any kind of magic with distrust and superstition, sometimes open hostility and violence. He was also an orphan. This was a dangerous combination to be.  
  
Ann took Jack under her wing, more a younger brother than a son, and her being more a babysitter and older sister than a mother. She allowed him to practice magic, even helped when she could, and gave him free reign to roam the empty stretch of beach Ann's current house was on. Jack, who she fondly called Jackaroo, was a lot like her - he functioned best when left alone. Within reason, of course. He was almost seven years old.  
  
Ann and Jack were the only people she knew that lived on this part of the island for miles in each direction. They had only the tide and nearby cliffs for neighbors. So, when Ann was out making sand castles with Jack late one Saturday morning in the beginning of the summer, she was surprised to see a man walking towards them. She wasn't scared - she had beat up enough men to consider herself adequately safe in most situations (a prerequisite for a young woman living alone and isolated). She watched him approach with curiosity. He had shoulder-length dark hair, a straight, long nose, and eyes that, once she could see them clearly, burned with an intensity that almost scared her. Despite the fact that it was summer, he wore dark trousers and a long-sleeve shirt. His clothes were casual, but in that I'm-rich-enough-to-dress-down sort of way. Ann tried to shake that last thought from her head. She certainly couldn't be bitter now that she was rich herself, although she definitely didn't look it. She was wearing khaki hiking shorts and a open light-blue button-down over her black bikini. A tan fishing cap hid her forehead from the sun.  
  
She stood and brushed the dirt off her shorts. She looked up at his face. He must be over six feet tall, she thought. Her 5'3" figure didn't come past his chest. "Can I help you?" she asked edgily. He was on her property.  
  
"I'm looking for a, er, an acquaintance of mine," he told her. He spoke with a crisp British accent. She wondered what her own American accent sounded like to him. Probably as weird, she guessed, as his deep voice sounded to her.  
  
"What does this acquaintance of yours look like?" she asked. She hadn't seen anyone out on her beach ever in the five months she'd been here, but it wasn't the kind of thing you go telling strangers.  
  
"He has dark eyes, dark hair, kind of longish, I guess about the length of mine."  
  
"Is he as pale as you?" she said, looking at his ghost-white hand. She cut him off before he could answer, "No, I haven't seen anybody by that description."  
  
"Are you sure?" he pressed her. "He's wearing teal green swimming trunks, and a white under shirt. He might have just run by?"  
  
"No," she answered. "I would remember if I had seen him."  
  
"Where did the bloody fool run off to now," he muttered to himself. "I can't believe Albus is making me baby-sit a thirty-five year old man." he said to himself in contempt. He scanned down the beach, but saw nothing but white sand in either direction.  
  
"What you name?" asked Jack.  
  
"What is your name?" Ann immediately corrected. When Jack was around new people his developing grammar tended to lapse years.  
  
The man looked down at the dark child at his feet. "Severus," he answered quickly, as if not sure this small boy was worthy of knowing.  
  
"Uncle Severus!" Jack cried out, flinging his arm around Severus's leg. He held on as if for dear life.  
  
"Let off you little brat!" Severus demanded with a scowl on his face. Ann grinned - a man after her own heart. She wasn't fond of children in general. She reacted to each child she met individually, annoyance with immaturity and unconcern with stupidity. She felt no desire to make funny noises at the lumps of fat women dragged around called infants. Ann wasn't a very nurturing person, but Jack had gained her trust and fondness. Jack had a habit of attaching himself to strange people - like Ann. It seemed Severus would now be another. She was pleased to note that the scowl on Severus's face didn't completely reach his eyes.  
  
"Let go of the nice man, Jack," she said. She didn't really care - Jack could do what he wanted. Ignoring her strict appearance, Ann was very lenient as a guardian. She and Jack suited each other.  
  
"I want to show him my magic tricks," Jack said. Ann had gone to great lengths to stress the need to hide his magic from normal people. Why was he ignoring one of the few rules Ann bothered to enforce now?  
  
"If you must," said Severus. "But I have no doubt it will only a pitiful mockery of true magic."  
  
Jack was undeterred as he gathered the four plastic shovels strewn about their feet and carefully balanced them one atop the other. Jack loved to pick up anything, stick or forks, and balance them.  
  
"Fascinating," Severus said in a voice that said otherwise. Ann, instead of being mad at him, was glad he was at least honest, although it didn't completely make up for his obvious lack of other desirable character traits. He lifted a foot and kicked the shovels over. They sprang back up into the vertical row. Severus smirked. "Magic indeed. Jack, is it? I suppose you're a witch?" he asked Ann.  
  
"No," she answered, unsure where this was going and how he was going to react.  
  
"Is his father then? Or are you both Muggles?"  
  
He must be a wizard, she thought. Maybe that's why he dresses so strangely? A voice said in the back of her head, don't count on it. Another answered, you're no fashion expert yourself chica. "No, neither his father nor his mother possessed magic."  
  
"I see." he sighed and wiped the sweat off his brow. He was not a man taken with small-talk, and he could see from the clenched jaw of the young lady that she wasn't either. "Well, I still have several miles to go before lunch, so if you'll excuse me."  
  
"You could eat lunch with us," Jack said, more a command than a suggestion. He had abandoned his shovels and was walking towards the house. "Please?"  
  
"I don't think your. um, guardian would appreciate it if you just brought strange people home for lunch."  
  
"You're welcome if you want to take a break from walking," Ann said suddenly. "It's no trouble to me - if you know how to make your own sandwich and stay out of my way." She didn't know why she had just invited a complete stranger over for lunch. It was the exact opposite of her entire life story. "After all," she added, "you did just walk five miles in the heat." What could they possibly talk about? She hoped if he accepted he didn't try to talk to her. Was she just attracted to older men? It might be the hair. Ann had always had a thing for guys with long hair - even if he did need to wash it.  
  
Severus examined the girl - no, that wasn't fair, she was a woman - before him. Her offer to lunch was just that. It wasn't an invitation for conversation, friendship, and obligation at all. Simply food. There seemed to be no pretense to her manner. Severus knew little of Muggle ways, but he did know that Muggle air-conditioning could possibly be a thing of magic in itself.  
  
He accepted.  
  
Maybe that bastard Sirius would turn up. Maybe Jack was starting to interest him - how did a boy like him end up on a place like this? Maybe he wouldn't mind spending a few minutes sitting in a neighbor's kitchen and eating sandwiches as if he were normal.  
  
Who knew?  
  
"How did you know I'd walked five miles?" he asked as he followed them up the wooden stairs to their back porch. "Lucky guess?"  
  
"Well, I assumed you live in the house on the cliffs. It's been unoccupied forever, but it's swarming with anti-Muggle spells, and you're a wizard. So, yeah - a lucky guess," she said.  
  
He entered their house. Except for the sand that had seeped onto most of the floor by the back door, and the piles of books and papers everywhere, the lady's house was beautiful: it was full of pale wood and huge ceiling to floor windows. One of the things that Severus liked about it was that there was very little decoration. No flowery nonsense or ornamentations filled space on the walls and floor. A few carefully chosen reproductions were on the wall and the spare woven rug on the wooden floors. Lady?  
  
"I forgot to ask what your name is," Severus apologized.  
  
"It's Ann," she replied, shoving various ingredients on the counter. Jack started to make a jelly and carrot sandwich. Severus made his own celery and peanut butter one. Ann smothered two slices of bread with butter and cut off a hunk of cheese. Jack drank tomato juice, Severus lemonade, Ann PowerAde. They didn't talk too much at first. Ann seemed extremely interested in Hogwarts and wanted to know mostly what Severus knew of its history and the spells protecting it.  
  
"I thought you said you were a Mud- er, Muggle. How did you even know about my house?" he asked her.  
  
"The anti-Muggle spells gave it away big time. When a reclusive hermit is walking on the beach and suddenly has strange urges to check for nonexistent appointments, it's a fairly large giveaway."  
  
"You mean all Muggles can tell when we put charms in place to keep them away?"  
  
"No, just me. I guess you could say I'm very observant. Or that I think about things too much."  
  
"But why in the world would you be so interested in magic if you can't even work it?" He knew instantly he had said the wrong thing. Her eyes usually thoughtful brown eyes suddenly flashed in anger.  
  
"Oh, I see. The wizards and witches can observe the Muggles - that's perfectly fine, because they're just rats, little curiosities, like ants you step on if they get in the way. But they're not completely human - they're not allowed to study the wizards and witches right back. What would the scientists say if the lab rats tried to put them under a microscope to examine them? If your kind can be interested in things like electricity, why is it so wrong for me to love to read your books and be interested in your history? Doesn't Hogwarts have a class dedicated to studying Muggles?"  
  
He had nothing to say to that. He felt vaguely unpleasant at the thought of a Muggle learning so much about his kind - it was contrary to everything he had been taught his entire life. This girl was certainly an anomaly, but he couldn't help wondering if she had a point. She pursued her studies with more zest and determination that most of the wizards and witches he knew. And she knew more, too. If there was one thing Severus could admire above all else in a person, it was competence.  
  
She was interesting to talk to, although she did have funny ideas. "What is magic?" she asked.  
  
"What do you mean?"  
  
"Well, you use it all the time, don't you? Is it something that comes from inside of you that affects the outside world? Or is it some kind of force that's inherent in matter that wizards and witches somehow manage to control, like being able to see a different dimension? And why is there only magic and non-magic? I know lots of Muggles who have one or two experiences during their lifetimes that seem to border on being magic. Do you think everyone has some magic, but only some can use it, like everyone having the muscles to be able to wiggle their ears?"  
  
Severus was disturbed because he had no answers. But he was intrigued, despite the fact that her strange questions were elementary. They ended up talking for a while about the difference between art and science and other such irrelevant topics that with most people Severus would get bored after a few minutes.  
  
"Are you going to the Quidditch World Cup at the end of the summer? You're from Britain, aren't you?" she asked.  
  
"No and yes. I wouldn't go to such nonsense anyway, but I'm staying here with someone who needed, uh, a little time away, shall we say? Are you going to go? Jack would probably enjoy it, although it's probably too late to get tickets if you didn't plan ahead."  
  
"We don't like large crowds."  
  
"Oh."  
  
When it started to become later in the afternoon he worried that he was staying past his welcome. She didn't insist on his staying but gave him an open invitation to come back. "Jack could really use, I don't know, a kind of father figure who knows more about magic than I do. I mean, I know a lot, but I don't have any. You know how it is at that age?"  
  
"Not really," Severus admitted. He didn't really recall his past very clearly. Maybe one of the reasons he was so unsympathetic towards children was his inability to really remember his own childhood.  
  
"Well, I don't either," she said. "Who actually remembers their childhood? I just remember being me. I wonder sometimes if humans are actually conscious beings before they finally grow-up at the end of high school."  
  
"Maybe sometime I will come back, to help Jack."  
  
"For me, too," she added. "Well, it's not often I find someone I can just talk to, on the same level and all." She tried to sound casual, but her face was apologetic. She was starting to seem older and older to him in his mind. It bothered him.  
  
She watched him walk away and wondered if he would ever stop by. If it was her, she probably wouldn't make a point of stopping by again, and he was a lot like her. She smiled. He thought her views were strange, but there was plenty strange about him. He was almost.evil, but in a good kind of way, if that was possible.  
  
She watched his tall figure disappear over a sand dune. He didn't look back.  
  
Evil in a sexy kind of way, she amended. 


	2. Sirius

A/N: I'm changing Jack's age from 6 to 10. There is a reason for this (if I ever get around to writing it). Please ignore any references to him being younger until I edit them out.

2  
  
It was late afternoon when Sirius spotted the woman and boy swimming near the shore. The little boy raised his arm and waved to him. He waved back. He was surprised to see them - Severus had said that it was deserted for miles around his house.  
  
They swam up to the shore and walked down the sand to meet him. They didn't seem surprised.  
  
"Greetings stranger," said the lady. "I'm Ann, this is Jack." Sirius introduced himself as Remus Lupin. She was fairly young, Sirius thought, definitely still in her twenties. Her lean, athletic body looked good in her black bikini. Sirius didn't even want to think about when the last time he saw a woman in a bikini was.  
  
"Hello friend of Severus," added Jack. He looked to be about ten, but acted like he was in his teens. He wondered where the boy's father was. Probably in the house farther down the beach.  
  
"Severus?" he spat. "That greasy git is no friend of mine. Don't tell me he was here looking for me?" They nodded. "Well, if he comes back again tell him to shove off."  
  
"That's a fine way to treat a friend," said Ann, "seeing as how it's his house you're staying in." He studied her face. He wondered where she was from.  
  
"Severus can go -"  
  
Ann didn't even admonish him for using such foul language in front of a minor. She just grinned and asked, "Lover's quarrel?"  
  
Sirius let loose a stream of expletives that made his former curse seem like a nursery rhyme.  
  
Ann, however, continued to grin. "How would I know? I've never had one." She looked down at the boy, who had done a handstand and was trying to balance on his hands, and not doing a bad job of it either.  
  
"What, someone as pretty as you?" Sirius thought he must be out of practice. She completely ignored him, turning her back as she started back for her house. Sirius was about to walk away when she asked, "You're coming?" He realized she was talking to him. She laughed at his expression. "Don't think I'm that kind of girl - but I did offer your friend lunch so I might as well offer you supper, lest my new neighbors suspect me of being biased. Are you a wizard too?" He nodded. She must be a witch. "Then go play with Jack," she said, leaving them.  
  
Jack started running down the beach towards a clump of grass. "Come see my shell collection!" he insisted. Sirius followed. What kind of woman would leave her son with a complete stranger? She certainly was odd, but Sirius couldn't exactly claim title to being normal himself.  
  
Sirius watched Jack stack his rather admirable collection of seashells in rows. He made strange designs out of them that made sense only to him. "This is a rabbit," he explained, stacking the shells so they balanced on top of each other perfectly. When Jack exhausted his supply of animals, he started juggling the shells with magic, making them float in patterns around his head like miniature constellations.  
  
"So, what's your mum like?" he asked, trying to get the boy to talk to him. Here he was, single and isolated on a lonely stretch of beach; and there she was, single and isolated on a lonely stretch of beach (she had said that she had no lovers - was it a hint?). It was too perfect. He didn't know if he could love a girl who had more muscles than him, but he could certainly try.  
  
"She dead," said Jack.  
  
It took him a while to realize what he was saying. "Who's the young lady who was at the beach with you earlier, your sister, or babysitter?"  
  
"Momma," Jack said, concentrating of his floating circles and hexagons. Sirius was starting to become bored. He had always prided himself on being great with children - a plus among women - but he didn't even have Jack's attention. Jack was as strange as the lady.  
  
Suddenly Jack looked up and sniffed the air. "Come on," he urged, jumping to his feet. He shrieked, "Pizza!" as he tore across the sand towards the house. Sirius grudgingly followed.  
  
"You don't have to stay if you don't want to," Ann said upon seeing his face at her back door. He immediately felt bad for wanting to leave. He paused in the doorway, unsure what to do.  
  
"Well? Are you coming or leaving? Don't just stand in the door like a dork, move. Come in or go out." With that, she disappeared inside. What a strange lady.  
  
He followed.  
  
Besides the books and papers strewn in piles everywhere, Sirius liked the fact that her house was so open. Maybe it was the high ceilings, or the fact that there were few walls and most rooms opened straight into the next. It was a house you could breathe in, and she didn't clutter it with lots of furniture. A steaming pizza was on the kitchen counter, a cardboard box advertising Red Baron discarded on the floor. Jack was setting four places at the small table by the bay window. It looked dark outside now. He wondered who the fourth place was for.  
  
Apparently Ann didn't know either. "Expecting company?" she asked Jack. He didn't answer, so she left it. They had started into their first slice when Jack looked towards the door. He jumped up and opened it, flinging himself onto the black figure outside, shrieking, "Uncle Severus!"  
  
He came in looking rather sheepish with Jack clinging to his shirt. "I was passing and couldn't resist infringing on your hospitality again," he explained.  
  
"Jack already set you a place at the table," Ann answered as if the only qualification for perfect strangers to eat in her house was that they have plates.  
  
"I knowed you'd came!" Jack said. Severus had become tired of Jack's hanging off his shirt and simply picked the boy up and propped him on his hip. Jack locked his arms around the man's neck.  
  
"I knew you'd come," corrected Ann automatically.  
  
"I knewed you'd come," repeated Jack, beaming in Severus's face.  
  
Severus froze when his gaze caught Sirius sitting at the table. "What do you think you're doing here?" he snarled. "Do you want to be caught? And have Albus blame me for getting yourself in trouble?"  
  
"Look, you slime-bucket, if I want to go for a walk I don't need to check in with you first," answered Sirius. "I can take care of myself without your, er, enthusiastic help."  
  
"And what are you doing here?" Severus demanded. "Walking around just waiting for anyone to recognize you! Well, don't blame me when it does happen." He looked considerably cheerful at the thought.  
  
"Shut up!" Ann said. They both looked at her. "I don't give a damn how much you guys fight as if you were married - just don't do it in my house." She had picked up a dusty book from under the table and was trying to read it. She glanced at Severus. "Sit and eat if you're going to stay," she demanded. "Or else just leave - I can't stand it when people just stand there." She turned a page.  
  
Severus didn't have to think very hard. Little Jack was practically dragging him into the chair next to his, and he did have to keep an eye on that rotten good-for-nothing Sirius. Besides, he liked Ann.  
  
"So what's a nice witch like you doing all alone in place like this?" Sirius said, putting her arm around her shoulders suggestively.  
  
She shrugged it off as if it were a fly. "Reading.and I'm not a witch, I'm a Muggle." He opened his mouth as if he were about to protest, but she jumped back in before he could. "If you don't like it, you can eat it," she said rudely, her eyes never leaving the page.  
  
Severus raised an eyebrow at Sirius. Sirius didn't know how to act around women like her - they didn't follow any of the rules. But then again, whatever Sirius knew was twelve years out of date. Severus, however, seemed to enjoy her ungraceful, matter-of-fact way of speaking.  
  
"If you're a Muggle, then why are you reading that?" he asked, pointing to the ancient book of death curses in her hand. Sirius hadn't even known that book still existed.  
  
"I wanted to," she replied as if it answered everything.  
  
He continued to try to pursue the conversation. Severus was playing some sort of game with Jack using nonsense sign language, which it looked like they were making up as they went along, but he was listening amusedly to Sirius's pitiful attempts to engage Ann in conversation.  
  
"What do you do for a living?" he asked. He wondered if she were independently wealthy, like he practically used to be, or Severus could be if he didn't teach at Hogwarts.  
  
"I read," she answered truthfully.  
  
He thought she was joking. "Does it pay well?"  
  
"I suppose so," she said.  
  
"What are you researching?" asked Severus.  
  
"Whatever I want to. There are over fifty piles of books around here, one for each project I'm currently engaged in, but I have more waiting in the back of my head. I jump around from topic to topic. Right now I'm researching a myth about an ancient book that explains countered curses." Severus nodded as if he knew exactly what she was talking about.  
  
"You do all this for fun?!" Sirius exclaimed. He was flabbergasted.  
  
She put her book down and said seriously, "In the good life, work and play is all the same thing, are they not? I figure if I'm going to be weird and read so much anyway I might as well get some money out of it." She put her book back under the table. "You gotta love what you do and do what you love. So, who loves to clear the table?"  
  
Sirius stared at her.  
  
"Well, don't expect me to do it for you - y'all did just eat my pizza."  
  
Severus silently started clearing off the table and started washing the dirty dished that were overflowing in the sink. Jack sat on the counter next to him and sang funny improvised songs in his soprano voice.  
  
Sirius didn't want Snape to have the satisfaction of knowing that he couldn't find his way back in the dark. He had walked through the water too much to try to smell his way back in dog form, too. He was happy he had a secure place to stay, but considering who was hosting him and why, Sirius would rather be on his own. It had been blackmail (get it, Black mail?), as Severus had told him in no uncertain terms. Sirius had managed to not be caught so far, but it wasn't the kind of life he had a propensity for. In school, he and James had been the trouble makers, but if there was one thing Sirius was bad at it was being sneaky. If anything, Sirius had been very gullible - a character trait he felt had cost the Potters their lives. Remus was the witty, sarcastic one; he was better at staying hidden. One could say that Sirius was a brave man; sometimes, he added, only because he could be exceptionally stupid at times. Dumbledore knew very well that Severus could hide Sirius better than Sirius could hide himself. He also knew that Severus would never incriminate himself by tipping off the authorities that a mass-murderer was knowingly being housed in his property. Of course, Severus being the control freak that he was had insisted on accompanying Sirius, more to make sure Sirius didn't mess up his house, Sirius was sure, than from any noble idea of protecting him. Sirius was glad that Dumbledore had conveniently forgotten to mention to Severus that he was an Animagus. The less Severus knew, he thought, the happier they'd both be. Besides, Sirius didn't trust Severus an inch, though Albus had enormously high faith in him.  
  
He poked at the strange metal box sitting in the open room adjoining the kitchen. What strange contraptions these Muggles came up with. There was a row of small boxes underneath with names like Moulin Rouge and Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail and Mr. Bean.  
  
"It's called a television," Ann explained right behind him. He jumped when she spoke - she had snuck up right behind him. "You turn it on and it shows different pictures. You can change which pictures it shows by pressing the numbers on the buttons," she said, pointing to several squares that looked like small buttons beneath the screen.  
  
"And what are these boxes down here?" asked Sirius. "Are these some kind of Muggle books?"  
  
"In a way, I guess you could say that. They're stories in picture form. You, uh, feed them into the machine here and it shows them on the screen. They're called movies."  
  
"I've never seen a movie before," he admitted. James and Lily used to go to Muggle towns to watch their movies, but he had never been interested. Looking back, he wished he had gone: it would have been more time he could have spent with them, not another small part of their lives he had never known. He was beginning to become intrigued.  
  
"Would you like to watch one? They usually last between one and two hours."  
  
He looked at the pictures of Muggles in weird poses on the front of each box. "That would be really fun, if you don't mind. Which one of these boxes do we have to feed the machine?"  
  
She laughed and picked up a box, showing him writing on the back. "You can read the synopsis on the back and tell me which one you want to see." She looked up. An owl had just flown in and left a letter on the window seat. "Excuse me."  
  
He continued to look through the Muggle movies, fascinated by the stories they invented. So this was how they managed to amuse themselves without magic. He had put back one he didn't understand at all (The Matrix) when he realized Ann was acting very strangely.  
  
She looked like she was trying to walk and stop herself from walking at the same time. With one hand she gripped the wrist of her other hand that held the letter, as if her hands were fighting one another. Her face was twisted in concentration.  
  
"Ann, are you okay?" he asked. Severus looked up from the dishes Jack was showing him how to put dishes in a box that opened next the sink. Sirius could see that he understood what was happening to Ann.  
  
"Get that letter away from her!" he shouted. He sprinted around Jack and hurled himself at Ann, ripping the letter out of her hand. It flew across the room. They watched it fly in an arch - it slowly ignited. The paper was entirely consumed by the time its ashes reached the ground.  
  
Ann looked disoriented for a second, then her eyes gained focus and she punched Severus in the stomach. "What did you do that for? Now we can't find out who sent it and what they wanted!"  
  
Severus's eyes blazed. "There was an Impervious charm in that letter!"  
  
"Well, you should have read it first to help me figure out who sent it! You think I'm stupid? People send me curses all the time. Jack knows to find as many clues about it as he can before burning it. Now I just have to wait for them to send another!"  
  
Severus looked horrified. "People send you these things?"  
  
"All the time," Ann said. "Every now and then some one sends me a Death curse.  
  
Severus's face remained blank but his eyes looked scared. "But how do you counter it?" he asked.  
  
"I dodge it."  
  
"What if you're not fast enough?" asked Sirius.  
  
Ann looked blankly back at him as if the thought had never occurred to her. "The only time I wasn't fast enough was the first time." She showed them the cartilage at the end of her ear where a small chunk was missing.  
  
"Why do I get the feeling you're not telling the truth about what you really do?" Sirius said.  
  
Ann had been calm before now but now she looked dangerously annoyed. Before Sirius had wondered why she hadn't been afraid of him, a stranger. Should he have been the one to be afraid of her? A common Muggle? He was beginning to think that Ann was someone to be reckoned with. "What I do," said Ann "is none of your damn business. I have no obligations to tell you anything."  
  
Ouch, Sirius thought. He was sure she was going to kick them both out now, but instead she said, "Are you going to watch a movie with us or not? If you are then hurry up and pick one - it annoys me when people take too long to make up their minds. Saturday nights are movie nights for me and Jack, and I want to get him to bed on time. Severus, go help him."  
  
Ann started making popcorn while Sirius and Severus looked at the Muggle movies together. They couldn't agree, of course, so Ann picked for them. She made them watch Grave of the Fireflies and then Moulin Rouge. Both Severus and Sirius thought this Muggle magic was pretty neat. But Sirius was starting to worry about Ann - both movies had very sad endings. She certainly had odd tastes. Sneaking a glance at Severus, Sirius had been beside himself with glee to see that there were tears in his eyes when Satine was dying. Well, it might have just been glare from the television, but Sirius had little to happy about these days.  
  
Seeing that she hadn't scared off the two wizards yet, Ann sent Jack to bed and picked a movie called Cube off the shelf.  
  
"Is this one going to be a bit more cheerful?" asked Sirius.  
  
Ann had an odd look in her eyes as she cryptically said, "It had a happy ending."  
  
Cube ended up being a kind of horror movie that was, Sirius thought, quite gruesome and horrific. He was on the edge of the couch the whole time. Apparently, to Ann a happy ending means that one character lived to the end. He was definitely starting to fear for her sanity.  
  
They both thanked her as she let them out the back door.  
  
"Don't thank me, just buy me more popcorn," she said. "I like popcorn." They had both noticed, as over half of the popcorn had found its way into her mouth before anyone else had even taken a handful.  
  
She invited them to come back if they wanted. "If you're not going to be any trouble," she added.  
  
It was quite late before they were on their way back to Severus's house. They didn't even have energy to argue as they walked along the moonlit beach in silence.


	3. Rumors

Ann hated to drive into town. The act of driving in itself was pleasant as it was vaguely reminiscent of the traveling she had undertaken all her life. The town was something else. The residents deeply resented her oblivious attitude towards their customs and language. They didn't understand that it was simply her nature - even in her hometown she had been considered odd. While other teenagers headed to a burger joint after school she had gone to the library or hiking by herself in the nearby woods. She had stayed home from her high school prom despite her family's objections.  
  
What Ann hated most about going into town was the people. The residents here were like people anywhere - she was distrustful of people in general. If she was with one person she was open and talkative. With two people she clammed up slightly. If there were more than three people around her she started eying the exits. The crowds in the market place made her slightly nauseous, like those hideous shopping malls back home where there were constantly masses of people pressed close around her. Sometimes crowds made her feel faint. She'd rather be quiet and alone. Being around so many people caused anxiety to gnaw at her stomach.  
  
She was glad Severus had decided to come with her. Other people were put off by her disinterest, but Severus quite enjoyed it. He had told her that no other woman had been able to be friends with him without trying to change him. They would always urge him to use hair potions and wear lighter colors. She responded that he could walk around naked for all she cared. A voice in the back of her head had said, "In fact, feel free to," before she could mentally slap it away. It was precisely these odd things about Severus that attracted Ann to him: his long hair, his dark clothes, his moody silences, and his intense privacy. Ann had been attracted to the mysterious and dangerous as a child - as she still was.  
  
Severus had examined her old Jeep curiously before entering it. He had little contact with the Muggle world - Muggles simply hadn't interested him.  
  
They bounced around on the gravel and dirt roads. Ann could see that Severus wasn't very taken with this mode of transportation. He kept a firm grip on the seat as if he might otherwise be thrown. Ann parked on the side of the main street in the small village.  
  
"This is the post office," she explained, walking towards the small building. "They deliver mail using humans, not owls, so it takes a bit longer."  
  
There was no air conditioning inside. Instead a bulky, clanking fan squatted in the corner like a sulking watchdog. Ann had a bundle of mail waiting for her. She only came into town every couple weeks - with only two people in the house she could get away with it. The same old man as always sullenly handed her the mail that had been waiting. She didn't know his name. It didn't matter. She put the mail in her knapsack.  
  
"This Curse Defense Guide you're looking for, is it dangerous?" Severus asked as they walked towards the food market. Severus had a bad habit of being nosy. He had found one of Ann's cards advertising M. A. Wyvern and immediately knew who she was. She had retrieved Moste Potente Potions for Hogwarts almost seven years ago. She had to track down and swallow the antidotes for nine different rare and deadly poisons to do so. It was dangerous only for those who didn't know what they were doing.  
  
"Not really," she answered, bringing her fishing hat lower over her eyes to block the sun. "It will require more physical stamina than any magic - and your help with the math." She had brought Severus sections of complex Arithmancy problems to check. The other sections were sent separately to various experts she could trust. She never relied on the same person to fit together two pieces of the same puzzle.  
  
"Is that why you've been so athletic lately?" Severus had offered to keep an eye on Jack whenever Ann needed him to, and Ann had taken up his offer rather aggressively. Of course, Jack was a solitary boy and little trouble. And Ann had warned him before that she would abuse his offer, but he wouldn't back down.  
  
Ann had been following a very strange training program for the past month, combining elements of tae kwon do, yoga, rock climbing, and endurance hiking. She would be gone for several days at a time bringing nothing but her knapsack, a canteen of water, and several power bars. Ann would come back dirty and exhausted. She'd rest for the remainder of the week and then set out again. Severus stopped by her house to find her asleep on the porch or on the couch. He would carry her to her room and cover her with a blanket.  
  
"I need to be able to survive for a week," Ann had explained. She expected her next mission to take no more than two days, but she didn't want to take any risks. "If something happens, I'll have a mental and physical edge. I'm not gonna start losing all that prize money now."  
  
Severus didn't like the idea of her trying to survive for several days without food. He didn't think practicing starving herself and covering hundreds of miles in a few days would help. But she insisted there was a method to her madness.  
  
Ann appreciated that Severus never tried to dissuade her from her goal. She thought he must a man who had been through worse. He certainly was a snoop, though. She had become in the habit of locking her bedroom door and her desk downstairs. He had an overwhelming curiosity to know what was going on. She thought he'd probably make a good spy. She imagined him as James Bond, knowledgeable and sexy. Or like Indiana Jones, with longer hair. But he never talked about himself and she didn't press him.  
  
If only he wasn't such a sneak trying to find out about the book she was researching. Privacy was something she valued more than money.  
  
Ann started to buy foods almost exclusively from the freezers in the back of a store. Severus stopped her. "Why don't you buy real food?" he asked.  
  
"I wouldn't know what to do with it - I can't cook," she replied.  
  
"I happen to be an excellent cook." He guided her to the vegetable stands and had her buy arrays of green things she hadn't known even existed. He had her buy strange fruits and small, brightly colored fish and all kinds of ingredients she forgot the names of as soon as he said them.  
  
"What do I need flour for?" she asked. "If you can't sprinkle it on ice cream, I won't be able to figure out what to do with it."  
  
But he insisted.  
  
"I don't like fancy foods," she warned him. "I'm perfectly happy eating jelly sandwiches and chocolates. You'd better not make anything too fancy. I hope you don't have some kind of extravagant, romantic dinner in mind because I'll probably barf it up and switch to macaroni and cheese."  
  
"I intend to enlighten you with British cuisine," he joked. "And a little extra. You have cooked something before, haven't you?"  
  
She squinted up at him. "I can make toast."  
  
Normally Ann protested fiercely if anyone tried to take control of any aspect of her life, but she allowed him to direct her shopping.  
  
As she drove home, she thought about her make-shift family. She thought of Severus poking around her house, complaining of her dirty dishes piling up in the sink and finally doing them himself when she wouldn't put down the book she was reading. She pictured him and Jack on the beach, wading on near the shore, Severus's pants rolled up to his knees. His legs hadn't been as scrawny as she'd thought they'd be. She imagined his cooking for them, staying up late to talk with her after Jack went to bed.  
  
She was happy. It all pleased her.  
  
Severus was glad that Ann had left to go swimming with Jack. She refused to have anything to do with cooking. It gave him time to snoop around.  
  
Severus knew there was nothing he could do to stop a grown woman from doing her job, but he knew that what she did was more dangerous than she knew. He couldn't imagine how she managed to survive. She had somehow managed to brush past death for years now, and every time accounted it to good timing. Severus had to find out everything he could about this book she was currently looking for. It was the only way to help her.  
  
He marveled at her ingenuity. How could a Muggle come up with all of these detailed descriptions of a place where a book was being held that few people even believed existed? He shifted through her papers, trying to find something of value. The problem was that everything of value he had ever seen in her hands went straight into her knapsack. And the knapsack never left her sight.  
  
He didn't blame her for being so secretive. They were extremely valuable secretly, worth thousands of galleons. But most of the things he could determine that she did were illegal. It was illegal for a Muggle to even possess a magical book in the first place, much less to trade them. Not to even mention the other magical items she possessed that ever wizards couldn't own. His biggest concern was a rumor he had heard lately concerning a certain Book. It wasn't the book Ann was working on at the moment, but he feared she would come to it one day. He knew his fears were unfounded - Voldemort was gone. Yet, if he ever did come back...  
  
Severus heard the back door slam shut. He did the only thing he could think of to cover his reason for being near the back room. He ran into the bathroom and lifted the toilet seat.  
  
She poked her head in anyway, oblivious to his biological functionings at the present moment. "You're a godamn snoop!" she said hotly.  
  
"What?" he asked nonchalantly as he zipped his pants.  
  
"You know what I'm talking about. Just happened to be in the bathroom, did you? Just happened to be by my study room?"  
  
He turned around at faced her. She was pissed. There was nothing he could do about that. If he explained she'd take even more offense.  
  
"Get out," she said, walking down the hall away from him.  
  
"What?!"  
  
"I said get out! I don't need your bloody cooking or your ugly face around here!" She ran up the stairs and slammed her bedroom door shut.  
  
His mouth was dry as he headed for the backdoor. He had blown it. He had found a woman he could be friends with as easily as Filch and he had blown it all on some stupid rumor.  
  
Jack stood in the back doorway. "She's mad," Jack said mournfully.  
  
"It's not your fault, it's mine," Severus admitted. Did this mean he wouldn't see Jack again? He enjoyed Jack's company. He admired children that had discipline and potential like Jack.  
  
"It's the letter."  
  
Severus stopped. "What letter?"  
  
"Momma got a letter today with the light in it."  
  
"A light in it?"  
  
"Like the letter she got when we first eat pizza together."  
  
Severus's eyes widened. "You must tell me everything you can remember," he said, peering down into Jack's small brown face.  
  
"An owl brought a letter, and it put the light on her so she couldn't move, so I read it and then burned it."  
  
"And what did it say?" He prayed he was wrong, that it was nothing.  
  
"It say: find Lyrinx."  
  
He shuddered. Lyrinx was the name of an ancient book that was supposed to have been destroyed centuries ago. Legend said it contained knowledge of either bringing mass death, or reversing it. It could wipe out entire countries, so the story went. And, most importantly, its pages contained the key to immortality.

Severus had heard from several colleagues that certain parties were gaining interest in the tome. The rumor had been true. Ann was in more danger than she could even begin to understand. Severus was silent. Lyrinx, The Book of Death. It didn't exist, of course, but then again practically none of the books Ann found did. Who would be insane enough to try to search for it? It must be some kind of criminal who sent those letters for jokes. But the last letter had been serious.  
  
He walked slowly up the stairs and paused outside the bedroom door. It was silent inside. He slowly turned the knob and entered the room.  
  
He stopped short when he felt a knife press into his back. "Drink this." Ann handed him a vial, a clear substance that he guessed was Veritaserum. He hesitated – if not made correctly the potion could be toxic – but decided Ann was smart enough to find a competent supplier. What had he to lose? He had his wand in his sleeve, and taking the potion wouldn't reduce his reaction time; years of serving the Dark Lord and being questioned by the Ministry had given him something of an immunity to its soporific effects. He drank it.

"Did you send that letter?" she asked.  
  
He was taken aback. He hadn't realized his behavior would seem so suspicious to some one observing him. She would have thought that he was trying to steal any knowledge she had of the Book. He shook his head. "No. I admit I was snooping, but only because I've heard rumors. Someone's been searching for the Book of Death. I was afraid you would be foolish enough to try to find it."  
  
"Who did you hear this from?"  
  
"Former Death Eaters." Thankfully, she didn't ask him how he knew them.  
  
"Were you afraid I would be threatened by them?"  
  
He sighed. "I was afraid if you would be confronted with it, you would try to find it. I wanted to discover how much you knew." This conversation was going badly. He knew that if she wanted to find it, she probably would. But he couldn't tell her that. If someone got their hands on her...

"Did you intend to stop me?"

"I'm not sure what I intended. I was worried about you." Damn it, the conversation was starting to turn sloppy. He hoped the potion wore off soon, as she hadn't given him a very large dosage.  
  
She turned away from him. "You think I can't take care of myself." He felt the pressure of the knife withdraw. "Well, fuck you."

He turned around quickly. "I said I was worried. There are people searching for this book that will do anything to find it. I don't want you to get mixed up with them."

She scowled. "What are you? My babysitter? I work alone. No one helps me."

"I could help you," he said suddenly. Was it the Veritaserum, or quick thinking? He wasn't sure.

They stared at each other.  
  
He smelled smoke. "Bloody hell!" he exclaimed. The food downstairs was burning.

A/N: Edit, book title is now Lyrinx – the Book of Death part is a subtitle. The word Lyrinx comes from Ian Irvine's Well of Echoes trilogy. And I changed the last scene to keep Ann more in character – and more bad-ass. Heh.


	4. Ann's Departure

4  
  
Severus stared in disbelief at the boy before him. "What do you mean, she left?"  
  
"She says I'm to give you this note," said Jack. Severus grabbed it and quickly tore it open. It read:  
  
_Dear Severus,  
  
I will be gone on business for several weeks. Please keep an eye on Jack for me (you did offer to, and I warned you I would abuse the privilege - I am simply keeping my word). Besides, you are both fond of each other, so it's really no skin off your nose.  
  
Not that my business is any of yours, but I have been commissioned by Alastor Moody to retrieve the previously lost Handbook to Counter Curses written by the Dark Mages of H'Oranidelle. It is not dangerous, so please do not worry for my safety. However, in the event that I do not return, please see to it that Jack is placed in an orphanage in Britain, as I want him to have the opportunity to attend Hogwarts. As you can see, the village is not very sympathetic to his needs.  
  
I must ask that you do not follow me. I know you worry that I will seek a previously mentioned book, but I have decided to forgo all commissions to find it.  
  
Thank you for being my friend.  
  
Yours truly,  
  
M. A. Wyvern  
  
P.S. Please burn this note after reading it - my clients are ensured the strictest confidentiality._  
  
He couldn't believe it. She was dismissing him with a business note, telling him that seeking a book that had killed countless wizards was no more dangerous than a hike in the woods. The possibility that she might not come back struck him more fiercely than it ever had before. She could be killed! What did she think she was doing? He looked at the little boy standing by the front door. "Did Ann tell you to come here?" he asked.  
  
Jack nodded, shifting his suitcase from one hand to the other. "She said to watch the tele until the cartoon ended at noon and then come here to stay with my Uncle Severus."  
  
Severus looked at his pocket watch. It was a few minutes past 12:30 p.m. "And when did she actually leave?"  
  
Jack rolled his eyes up at the ceiling. It took forever for him to answer, "Momma left a bit before nine."  
  
Damn!  
  
"Sirius!" he shouted over his shoulder.  
  
"What?" The other man walked out the hallway, still in his boxers, a particularly ugly pair with grey whales splattered over a dark blue background.  
  
"Get dressed! And help Jack into a guest room, he's staying with us for a while," he snapped. "Ann left - I'm going after her."  
  
He disapparated before the fool could question him further. Severus was immediately on Ann's back porch. He walked into the house and froze. All of the books were missing. He ran into her study. The empty bookcases stared back at him, along with the clean desk that had previously held gigantic quantities of papers. Of course Ann wouldn't risk leaving her notes and books behind where they could be found.  
  
He tried to use a Snoop charm to follow her magically but it died instantly. He cursed. She must have gotten her hands on some pixie dust - just a sprinkle can dispel even the strongest tracing charms.  
  
He found out front that her car was gone. He began to transfigure his clothes to make them less conspicuous. He was going to have to follow her the Muggle way.  
  
Ann yawned. She had stayed up all night packing, but she didn't want to sleep on the plane. All she could see out the window besides her were fluffy white clouds.  
  
He would follow her, of course, but so what? He might be smart, and he might be powerful, but a Muggle he was not. Traveling through the airports and train stations that Ann passed would be slightly harder for him to pull off.  
  
Ann unzipped her knapsack and glanced at the thin attaché case inside. She didn't know what she would do without it. It fit perfectly into her knapsack in into her lifestyle. She had a friend charm it so that she could file away large quantities of books, notes, and important documents during her frequent travels. She now had her entire library in there - it wasn't even that hard. All she had to do was say the name of the book and its author as she dropped it in and it would be filed automatically. To retrieve it, she'd do the same. Of course, that meant she had to make sure she didn't loose the book list she guarded with her life. But she could just dump it over and demand all the books, but she really didn't want to know exactly how many books had floated to the bottom and become lost, mostly cheap Muggle paperbacks that she read once and filed away only to be forgotten. She could also call forth the labels to dig through if she forgot what she was looking for. But she preferred to simply remember since the number of labels was more than she could count. The amount of files she had accrued was enough to make even the toughest librarian cringe. Her attaché case definitely made her nomadic life less of a hassle.  
  
It was habit, of course, for her to pack up everything with her when she left on a mission. She never went back to the same place after one of her book trips. Fearing discovery, it wasn't unnatural for her to more to an entirely different country. She had never owned a piece of property in her life. But she rented with cash only. But this time wasn't the same - Jack was back home waiting for her (and Severus! she thought). It made her feel slightly queasy to pack everything up, as if she were jinxing herself into not making it back. She dismissed the thought; Ann was not a superstitious person.  
  
Ann had bought her tickets in cash. People were suspicious, of course, but what could she do about it? Severus, or whoever else happened to be trying to follow her, couldn't trace her. She had most of her money on her. She was distrustful of banks, except for a select few like Gringotts. A lot of her money stayed in the wallet hidden in her attaché case. The wallet was charmed very much like the container it was in, so that she merely had to call up the amount she needed. She kept a normal wallet in her pocket and refilled it at necessary intervals. It was dangerous, perhaps, to keep so much money in one place, but Ann didn't worry. She had plenty more money, and no one would be able to get inside the wallet anyway - she had taken precautions. The attaché case and wallet were both magiced with the strongest security charms available. Only Ann could open them. Some one could tear both completely apart and not find a single scrap of paper. Ann was fairly proud of her possessions. Their service was well worth the effort of their making.  
  
It was habit for Ann to take a meandering route towards her final goal. She had had all kinds of people try to follow her: goblins, muggle businessmen, even that annoying Rita Skeeter. They inevitably failed. There were dozens of M. A. Wyverns around the world, and she was a muggle and a young woman - much different from the older, male wizard they thought they were following. Ann fancied that even if they had her full name and photo they still couldn't catch her. It was Ann's nature to be slippery when it pleased her. She couldn't survive in the real world of modern society, but she sure as hell could sneak past it. She had to admit thought that as much as the blatant sexism pissed her off, the false image had probably saved her neck on several occasions.  
  
Ann was almost there. After the plane landed, she would be in a city only a day's drive away from her destination. She would take a train three quarters of the way there, and then hide her overnight bag. She would then set off into the mountains that lined the town with only her hiking pack, her valuables tucked inside. It would be straight uphill from there. She would walk the rest of the way.  
  
To be continued..


	5. Journeys

*Disclaimer: J.K.Rowling owns Severus and Sirius; I own the plot, Jack, and Ann - anyone attempting to steal the latter with be vivisected*  
  
5  
  
He had lost her. Severus sat in Muggle jeans and a plaid shirt outside terminal 24 B in Houston, Texas and admitted defeat. He had managed to track her for a short while, but it became harder and harder until he realized that he had lost her trail completely somewhere around Peru. 'What does it matter if she gets herself bloody killed?' he asked himself. But it did matter.  
  
Because of Jack, he quickly amended. There was no way she was going to leave a six year old in Severus's incapable hands. Not that he held a grudge against the boy - it's just that it would be plain rude. He wanted to see her come back and swing Jack around in a circle and then chase him down the beach and throw him in the water, laughing as he magically threw large quantities of water back at her. His thoughts traveled to other things he'd like to see, like that black bikini of hers. It was modestly cut, a functional swimsuit unlike those suits made of nothing but strings he saw girls wearing nowadays. Sirius would of course look no further than the fact that it did expose a large amount of skin. But, yes, that was nice too.  
  
He shook his head. There were more important things to think about. Right now there were only two options: follow or return. He could continue to try to follow her, piecing together all the small bits of information he had gathered throughout the month he had known her. Potentially, he could continue to run around in this fashion without finding a thing. His efforts, if they were misplaced, would be in vain. But going back was the same thing, only he would have to sit there wondering if he could have found her if he just searched for one more day.  
  
He decided. He would continue searching.  
  
But this brought even more considerations: what would he do once he found her? She was a grown woman, and this was how she made her living. This was her life. He could forcefully use his magic to restrain her, but she would be miserable. He had done enough dangerous activities himself to know better than to try to stop her. So what could he do?  
  
He thought of Ann, all alone and unprotected. She had strength: he had noted her firm muscles as she ran along the beach with Jack. She had intelligence: she had solved puzzles that had stumped scores of wizards for centuries. She was resourceful: she knew what she needed and how to get it, despite being a Muggle. But the one thing she didn't have was magic. How could she fight against magic when she had none herself?  
  
Severus had magic. He suddenly sat up straight when he realized why he had followed Ann in the first place: he hadn't wanted to stop her, he wanted to join her!  
  
He gathered his bag, resolute about his course. He felt excited at the possibility of an adventure. Definitely been in the dungeons too long, he told himself.  
  
All he had to do now was find her.  
  
************  
  
Ann stopped by a small waterfall for lunch. She took off her hiking boots, a pair sturdy enough to take any amount of assault but light enough to be quick in emergencies. They were started to wear a bit, but Ann had been through so much with them that she didn't want to throw them away. Not that she was sentimental about them - Ann was rarely sentimental. She just didn't want to switch boots when she had already found and broken in the perfect pair. She dangled her feet into the small pool of water from her perch on a mossy rock. The waterfall barely afforded it's name; some rivulets of water trickled down steep rocks that piled about twice Ann's height to form a pool of about waist depth before slivering down the mountain as a thin stream. Ann ate an apple as she watched the water bugs skim across the top of the pool. A horsefly landed on her knee. "If you bite me I'll kill you," she told it calmly. It ignored her and continued to sit in silence. She took another bite, squirting apple juice down her chin.  
  
The forest was so thick it was almost a jungle. Ann had worn tough pants, but the thorns she burrowed through still cut her. The entire place seemed built just to inflict pain on her. It might as well be called Horsefly Mountain, she thought bitterly. She had never been overly fond of flies, but the swarms of horseflies she had to walk through were driving her insane. They kept on landing on her and flying right by her ear, making her grimace.  
  
In spite of the flies, she took off her shirt and enjoyed the cool breeze on her bare skin. Rolling up her pants, she carefully waded through the shallower regions of the small pool, navigating among the slippery rocks with difficulty. She stumbled once but managed to regain her balance before she could fall over and drench her clothes. There was a sharp pain in the bottom of her foot though. She limped to the edge of the pool and cleaned the gash on the sole of her foot that a sharp rock had made. Pure genius, she told herself. You should do that every time: injure yourself before you even get there.  
  
She shoved back on her boots and after gathering her things continued to climb. The trees soon thinned out; now she had to maneuver on the rocks. She slipped several times, but grabbed a limb from a nearby bush before she could slide back down. She hated rocks slanted this way - she'd rather they just went straight up so she could climb them or else be flat enough to walk on. These were slanted so that she couldn't exactly climb, but she couldn't walk upright over their steepness. She'd rather it was one way or the other.  
  
Finally she reached the top. It took a bit more effort to find the correct trail, as there were anti-Muggle charms at this point trying to con the unwary to turning on a trail that led straight back down the mountain. She wondered if she was the only Muggle to have made it this far. When she felt a strong urge to turn left, she turned right. When there appeared a huge rock in her path that convinced her to turn back, she went straight over it. Going against the charms wasn't all that hard. Perhaps someone with less willpower wouldn't be able to resist their pull, but Ann knew you simply had to keep your wits about you.  
  
Finally she reached the cave. She passed by it and set up camp in a clearing out of sight from the gaping hole. She had been walking for two days straight and wanted one night of rest before she tackled this next mission. Who knew how long she would be in there before she could retrieve the book? She wanted every advantage possible, including a good night's sleep. She set up camp in time to watch the sun set. She could see the whole world, it seemed, from up here. The gash on her foot hurt with every step she took, but what was a little pain in the face of greater adventure? She would have the book before the week was over.  
  
It wasn't even a possibility that she wouldn't be able to survive this mission. Every mission had it's own distinct danger. No, it simply wasn't an option. She would succeed, if only because there was no other alternative. Sleep didn't come easily to her once darkness enveloped her small tent - she was too excited about the journey to come.  
  
************  
  
TBC. . . 


	6. The Cave

6.  
  
Ann cautiously entered the Cave of Niet'linair, as Mages had called their stronghold so long ago. There was a huge drop off almost like a cliff one hundred meters into it. Spots of white gleamed from far below, many of them probably a poor animal or even human who had run into the cave for shelter during a thunderstorm only to meet their untimely deaths. At least she could see the bottom. Last time she had crawled down a wall like this using a rope she was attacked by flesh-eating skeletons. She was forced to melt them with acid. They made a kind of screeching noise when she did so. The drop-off here was steep, but Ann felt there was enough handholds to climb down and back up again without equipment. Nevertheless, she tied a rope firmly around a stone so tall is was almost a pillar and lowered the rope until it's end touched the ground far below. She began to climb down without using the rope, enjoying the excitement she felt each time her foot slipped, or her hand grabbed only loose rocks, or she misjudged a distance between ledges. Dangerous? Only for the timid and wary, she scoffed. Nothing could stop her now: she was in her element.  
  
The floor beneath was rocky and uneven, forcing her to feel her way more than see, even with her flashlight it remained dark. She found it easier to crawl in places than try to balance walking. The magnificent structures around the cave awed her. She had learned the named of the different rock formations back in grade school but had since forgotten. It would be fun to come back with a camera someday, she noted, amazed at how beautiful the dark cavern was. Water dripped constantly from the ceiling and gathered in pools whose surfaces had remained untouched for centuries. It didn't take long for Ann to find the path that the H'Oranidelle wizards had carved through the rocks thousands of years ago. It was rigged with dangerous and deadly traps, but Ann walked on it without concern. She had already figured out where all the traps were from the riddle, which was in the shape of a poem. From fragments of the poem in no less than six different translations, along with the faded and hardly legible original manuscript, Ann had pieced together the poem to how it had originally been written - or, as close as anyone would ever get. She pretended she was Indiana Jones (her idol!) bypassing all the traps in The Last Crusade.  
  
  
  
_The howling winds of Niet'linair_  
  
_Cuts through the trestles of your hair_  
  
When she reached a spot between two rocks where the draft caused a low mournful sound she dived into a forward roll, humming music to the movie soundtrack as deadly blades swished overhead, cutting through the exact spot where her head and chest had been. They hadn't mentioned in the movie that it hurt your head to do gymnastics on hard stone, but she grinned anyway. It was getting interesting.  
  
_The path soon will begin to slack_  
  
_When certain death sits behind your back_  
  
_As unprotected the traveler will be_  
  
_It will be the last thing you see_  
  
When the path turned straight into a wall, abruptly ending without another turn in sight, Ann only chuckled. She closed her eyes and listened for movement behind her. Taking the charmed whistle hanging from a string around her neck, she blew into it as hard as she could. Ann waited to hear the heavy thud before turning around to observe the dead basilisk behind her. The archaic Shundari word for "certain death," _ackirac eca_, was backwards in the original manuscript, which was idiomatically incorrect: _eca ackirac_. Grammatically, it still soundly meant "certain death", but Ann couldn't help but notice that said backwards it sounded shockingly similar to the old tongue's phrase for basalisk, _ekaki rahk_, literally translated to mean "the eyes of doom." Add in the heavy foreshadowing in the last line of that verse and all Ann had to do was have a friend charm her whistle to sound like a rooster's crow. Sometimes she couldn't believe that so many thousands of wizards and witches had been killed in this cave - were they all daft? As long as you know what you're doing, Ann reassured herself once more, it's really not very complicated at all. But then again, Shundari was an ancient wizarding scholars language so intricate that few could master it. Ann had spent countless hours of grueling study since she first encountered the language at the age of fifteen. The complete lack of knowledge of this language meant she was, as always, self-taught. I should certainly hope I could learn it after ten years, she thought. But some magically scholars had spent their entire lifetime studying the language with no success. Only few living today knew the language, Albus Dumbledore being one, which gave Ann a distinct edge over her competitors. Half the information she gathered came from discarded documents that no one else save herself could decipher.  
  
Ann extracted the knife from her boot (she also had one hidden in her backpack, up her sleeve, in her pocket, and in her sports bra) and cut out one of the basilisk's deadly fangs. She fished around in her pocket to find a thimble to put on its poisoned end. It would do no use getting this far only to cut herself with a basilisk fang. She put it into her backpack - it would might come in handy, and if it didn't she liked to keep souvenirs of her trips. Even Severus had paled when she had showed him her collection of souvenirs, mostly deadly objects such as the fang she now carried.  
  
She turned back to where the path ended and walked straight into the wall. Some people preferred to close their eyes when they passed through magical barriers but Ann liked to see what was coming. This particular barrier would keep all magic from passing through it - the few trinkets Ann kept in her pocket weren't worth it's time to repel. Technically, she could have simply walked through in the first place, but it seemed foolhardy to not take care of the basilisk first incase she was forced to retreat back out through the entrance. Once she was through she found herself in a long tunnel whose walls were full of dazzling jewels. Ann knew they were really razor-sharp spikes - one step in the wrong direction was agonizing death.   
  
_If riches you desire then take_  
  
_Beware though he whose sight is fake_  
  
Again, it was merely wording: fake in Shundari is "ika" - which also happens to be a nickname for the poisoned spikes tribes had used to prevent outsiders from walking through their territory. This whole riddle thing was child's play really.  
  
The tunnel turned opened into a large circular cave. A row of large limestone trunks lined the wall with statues places besides each. The trunks were decorated with what in the original manuscript Ann had thought was nonsense symbols. But after realizing there was a pattern to it she set out to break the code. What had first looked like random symbols was actually complex Arithmancy equations. If she could work each out, as she had done, it would tell her what lay inside each box. One would engulf whoever opened them in fire - but that was one of the nicer outcomes. Others would petrify, vivisect - the more gruesome ones would suck the life force out of whoever opened them, but slowly so that they would spend the last week of their lives trying to crawl back towards the entrance to the cave. They wouldn't make it.  
  
The final piece of the puzzle had been linked by a friend Ann had come across years ago called Dr. Yakov, a Muggle mathematics/physics and Arithmancy expert. According to him, the trunk five down the row to the right of the door would lead to the book. So Ann instead opened the trunk to the left of the entrance. She proofed everything down to the minutest detail herself and had found a simple mistake, easily overlooked, that ruined the entire problem. But Dr. Yakov didn't make mistakes like that. Ann was capable of doing her own research: she found that Yakov had been bribed heavily by Ann's competitors and life-time enemies - Hegemony, Inc. - the most idiotic book dealers to ever live. The company was rich and successful, which could be attributed not to their cunning and brains, but overbearing manipulation. Hegemony had sent several gangs to kidnap her - the last one she had left unconscious in an alleyway in Rotterdam with permanent memory spells, thanks to the bricks she had crushed their skulls with. Ann wasted no time in compiling a report on Yakov, including some very nasty testimonies from former female students and some letters and copies of emails she had managed to secure which detailed the sabotage of a government project. She didn't care if any of it was true or not - once she handle them over to the Russian Ministry, Yakov was out of business - permanently. Lots of people would have scratched Yakov off their list of trusted advisors and let it be, but for Ann it was all or nothing. Hegemony, Inc. would no doubt be furious with her, as always, which she found amusing. She took betrayals very personally.  
  
It did mean she would have to watch herself. If Yakov had any brains at all, which was doubtable, and had access to the original manuscript Ann had copied the Arithmancy equations from he could easily discover what she was after. It was her fault of course - she should know better than to try to rely on anyone else for something she could do herself. She wasn't scared, though, despite the danger in which this placed her - no one could stop her. Even if they followed her straight into this cave they wouldn't find her, instead likely they would be killed in the endeavor by the cave's many traps, magical or otherwise.  
  
Sure enough, the trunk opened to expose stairs leading down, like a cellar. Just to be certain it wouldn't close after her she poured a vial of liquid onto the heavy lid and said the incantation from a good distance away. The top of the trunk exploded, flying throughout the room and covering the floor with another layer of dust. The magic was already imbued within the liquid so that even a Muggle could use it, with the proper incantation. She had several more vials made of unbreakable glass filled with the same highly illegal and hard to come by substance, which was cryptically called EXE. Severus had come across a crate full of Exe in her basement while looking for the cooking pots Ann had ditched and tried to convince her how dangerous it's ownership and storage was. She agreed and promptly moved them to the attic where he wouldn't find them.  
  
She tied an uncuttable rope, this one magically charmed to stretch as long as needed, and tied it around one of the statues placed throughout the room, presumably of the H'Oranidelle Mages. Using so much magical equipment made her feel cheated of the true adventure. On her last trip she had packed nothing more than a small mirror, a handkerchief, and a peanut-butter sandwich. She was proud of the fact that she could usually get by with little more than common Muggle household items. She looked at her watch and found it had been over two hours already since she had entered the cave. Sometimes she timed her expedition to see how fast she could finish, the fastest yet being three hours and one minute. Today didn't look to be a record. She changed the batteries in her flashlight, just in case, and pulled out her necklace from under her shirt. Her necklace was a Nightglass that would shine light if her flashlight should fail. Only the wearer would be able to see the light, whether it was around the neck of a magical being, rodent, or even Muggle. She wore it everywhere. Severus, of course, had recognized it instantly - it was made by dark magic and had to be ordered from a shop on Knockturn Alley all the way in London. She climbed down warily - now wasn't the time to twist any ankles - with her knife out and ready in one hand, her flashlight in the other, the rope securely tied around her waist.  
  
_The way downstairs is dark and damp_  
  
_To see you need more than a lamp_  
  
_The creatures there are in a fit_  
  
_Requiring sharper things than wit_  
  
She froze when she heard the first clicking sound. It came from behind her. Damn! One had snuck by her and she hadn't even seen it. She switched off her flashlight and switched it for another dagger, and continued walking down the stairs under the strange glow of the Nightglass. She hadn't expected to encounter the llorsks until she was out of this tunnel. It would be harder to fight them here, where they could easily surround her on all sides. Llorsks were small scaly creatures the size of a dog, but shaped almost like rodents. The gray animals burrowed magically through rock, meaning they could potentially come out from any of the walls, top or bottom, and kill their prey before it even knew what was coming. The only sound they made was a quiet clicking, which they used to communicate with each other when they found food. Little did they know the roles had been reversed: they now would be the prey. Plenty of powerful wizards had managed to fly by the magical barriers only to be overtaken in physical combat.   
  
Poor fools, she thought to herself, slicing long slits down both arms with her daggers. The smell of blood would attract all of them to her - she didn't want to leave any around that could surprise her later. Sure enough, the walls were soon filed with clicking llorsks burrowing through the stone around her. She smiled, picturing them licking their chops in anticipation. One flew at her from the right; she dodged, quickly slashing its belly open as it went past. Suddenly they all attacked at once, making the small space she had to maneuver full of clicking grey scales. She wove in and out between them, slashing in quick, furtive movements. She only had to injure each enough to draw blood. Llorsks were nasty creatures that were attracted by blood, even the blood of their fallen comrades.   
  
They were beating her up pretty well themselves, she thought - a small scratch here, a bite there, began to add up. The more tired she became, the faster she moved. Her instinct sharpened into focus as the minutes wore on under the seemingly endless supply of llorsks that followed each other out of the walls. The air was full of loose scales and blood flying everywhere, in her hair and into the faces of her attackers - if the situation hadn't been so serious she would have laughed. Her fighting became more and more brutal, more accurate, more deadly. She sprang up and grabbed one that was hanging on the ceiling, waiting for an opportune moment to drop down and claw out her eyes, and slit its throat. She threw it down the stairs at the same time she kicked away the body of another whose brothers were already starting to rip it apart. The llorsks were considered to be almost as intelligent as humans, but Ann knew this to be a false conclusion. Just because a large number of stupid people could together wreck havoc didn't make its individual members any less stupid, the Death Eaters thirteen years ago being a prime example. The llorsks were smart enough, however, to realize that their fallen comrades were much easier prey than the slashing human maniac, although it still took them almost forty-five minutes before they began to back off. After running that last ultra-marathon, such a short time for a workout was nothing to her.   
  
She wanted to stop and take a break, but she consoled herself with a quick sip of water before getting back to business. Ignoring her aching muscles and skin stinging with sweat, she methodically killed each and every one of the llorsks as the ones left munched on the food she had inadvertently provided them with. Filthy scavengers, she thought as she kicked one. It lunged at her in fury and she shoved her dagger directly into it's eye before it could reach her. If even one were left alive it could do enough harm to her that it compromise her entire mission. She was determined to leave with no more injuries than she already had - heck, her foot hurt enough as it was and wasn't even an injury from inside the cave. It felt like a sharp needle was being pushed into the tender arch of her foot with each step she took. She balanced slightly on the outside of her foot as she walked. When she tried to resist the pain it only became worse. If she instead relaxed her mind and accepted the pain, she became drawn into it and it no longer bothered her. It was a special ability she had in order to endure pain - it had allowed her to walk through acid which gave her third degree burns in order to retrieve that book on summoning fire demons (what her clients wanted such a book for was of no consequence - she was paid to do a job and she did it).   
  
It was time to move on. She grabbed a carcass and flung it over her shoulder. One never knew when a dead llorsk would come in handy. She hid the rest of the bodies out the way behind a large rock where the tunnel opened up into a larger room incase she had to go back through in a hurry - many places she had explored were rigged to self-destruct when the book was taken in attempt to bury the thief alive. It was a mind-numbing task gathering the many bodies, but a bit of foresight could easily save her life later on. Turning back on her flashlight, she continued down the large cavern. At the end there was a doorway of sorts which led to a small bedroom-sized chamber. There were five different openings, each a tunnel leading deeper into the cave, each representing one of the five mages who lead the infamous H'Oranidelle Order.   
  
_The five founders lonely stood_  
  
_Each watchful from beneath his hood_  
  
_The first one, amply large and fat_  
  
_Prowls like an ancient jungle cat_  
  
_The second, sleek and smooth as jade_  
  
_If for the wanderer forbade_  
  
_The third sits smartly on his heels_  
  
_Awaits the feet that bring him meals_  
  
_The tranquil fourth will calmly state_  
  
_A miserable and abysmal fate_  
  
_But the rocky turbulence of the last_  
  
_To the answer straight runs fast_  
  
She walked around the cavern in a counter-clockwise circle. The tunnel directly to her left whose entrance was larger and wider than the rest, perhaps fooling some into thinking that it was a main tunnel, and therefore to be taken. The second glowed with green crystals which were probably, Ann guessed, poisoned for those foolish enough to think that a room full of gems could only lead to greater treasures. The third was short but wide and gaping like a gigantic mouth. The fourth appeared to be the nicest: old, used torches still sat decaying on the walls and the floor was smooth and well-worn from an abundance of feet walking over several centuries time. Many people had taken this path before and for a wary adventurer it might appear the safest and most obvious path. Ann shook her head and approached the last tunnel - seriously, was she the only person to ever search for this book who was actually conscious? The last tunnel was a perilous, rocky one that promised many wrong turns, broken noses, and twisted ankles. Good thing my ankles are made of rubber, she thought. They had been twisted so many different ways in her lifetime without breaking that it astounded her they were even still connected to her legs.   
  
She sat outside the entrance to the tunnel and checked over her possessions, cleaning up the several places she had been scratched, putting an antidote to the poisonous llorsk fangs on the places she had been bitten, and making sure all her weapons and notes were in order. Out of curiosity, she slipped off her right boot and peeled her sock off her foot. The bottom of her foot was swollen and red, but the skin of the arch of her foot immediately around the gash, which before had been oozing yellow liquid, had turned bright green. It was infected.  
  
She blew out her breath and almost cried. Now what am I going to do, she moaned silently. Common sense told her that skin didn't normally turn green for no reason and that one experiencing such a thing should probably drop whatever dangerous situation they were currently engaged in and retreat. But she had done fine so far, despite being wounded. Stupid, stupid, stupid! She should have been more careful - this entire mission would be no more dangerous than going for a swim if she proceeding with caution. Why had she gone wading on slippery rocks? Now she'd have to run away like a coward. Or did she?. . .  
  
She had been fine so far, despite her injury. She had killed over a hundred llorsks, defeated a basilisks, even did a bit of rock climbing. It was only in her foot. She could be home by tomorrow afternoon if she went directly back home after retrieving the book, instead of taking her usual meandering course around the world before zeroing in on her destination. Severus would be able to cure it for her then - he knew every healing potion in existence.  
  
Maybe she was just overreacting? But she knew to always trust her instincts on such things, and her instincts told her this infection was going to become very nasty. The only question now was could she retrieve the book despite it? She looked around at the small cavern in the uncanny silence of the cave and frowned. Everything up to now had gone perfectly smooth, as if it were a textbook case of such a mission. There had been no unexpected trapdoors, no fire-breathing demons, no extra riddles to be solved. This worried her.  
  
She shook her head. She was M. A. Wyvern, and she never failed to find a book the first time around. She knew that should she fail to reach it this time she would never come back. It was all or nothing - she never repeated a mission, and today wasn't going to be the first time she did. She put back on her boot , secured her backpack in place, and entered the tunnel. She was too close to turn back now.  
  
*************  
  
(Some notes:  
  
-Several allusions to Orson Scott Card's Ender's Shadow series: gangs in Rotterdam, Hegemony Inc  
  
-Shundari = allusion to Ian Irvine's fantastic The View from the Mirror series, name of main continent is Santhenar, I just messed up the letters a bit and made it a language; also a Lorrsk (again I changed the spelling to make it llorsks) is a highly intelligent humanoid creature from the void in Irvine's novels, I borrowed the name, but not the characteristics of the creature.  
  
-Nightglass is from Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule; it gives off light but with some not so happy consequences, thought it would nice foreshadowing for those Goodkind fans out there. . .  
  
-All Shundari words are, to the best of my knowledge, merely nonsense syllables and don't mean anything beyond the definitions I give in the story  
  
-Ann's record for retreating a book, three hours and one minute, is significant because it's my record for the longest distance run I've ever done.  
  
-Thanks to everyone who reviewed: Caribel, Mysterious-backpacker, Bex the bold, alexgray, MadMonkette, missy, Lunatic, byrdgirl, and Teresa  
  
Thanks for reading! Honk if you love Severus! Or not. . .) 


	7. Search

**(A/N: Thanks to Arinya for the inspiring, though slightly violent review; I'm glad I've already decided to continue this story, as I happen to like breathing.)**  
  
7  
  
Ann walked into the cave without hesitation. She looked ahead several steps to pick her path through the rocky terrain. It was like second nature to her; she leapt from rock to rock easily, as if dancing across the sharp indentations. She had once climbed a mountain with a friend in this fashion, jumping from rock to rock instead of climbing up the dirt path. Her friend wouldn't believe her when she said her way was easier. But it was - when you're having fun, you're never as tired as when you're not. The long, narrow cave gave little room for interpretation. The only way to go was forward. She was tempted by the small shelf-like rocks on the wall that were just begging to be climbed. You're on a mission, she told herself, stop fooling around. Maybe on the way back. . .  
  
The cave became narrower and narrower. The ceiling that had once opened into darkness was rapidly approaching her head the farther she climbed. She couldn't tell whether she was going up or down, but the small rapid hills soon evened out and became almost flat. She walked quickly, disheartened at the lack of a challenge, watching as the walls on each side became closer and closer. Soon the cave ended into a tunnel where she could reach out a hand on either side and touch each wall - the ceiling likewise was now only about seven feet up. The cave narrowed still, until it came down so sharply she was forced to hunch over and shuffle through. She was left facing a black hole the size of a cat door. Ahhrr! She hated climbing through tunnels - it was nerve-wracking to have little choice in exits. But she had no sooner stuck her head in when she found herself confronted by rock. There was no exit - heck, there was barely an entrance. She pressed her hands against the hard surface in front of her disbelievingly. It couldn't just end! There had to be something to it, something she had missed in the riddles. But the riddle mentioned nothing else about this particular part of the caves. She was simply supposed to go through it to the end, only there was no end.  
  
"Crap!" she shouted to herself. She listened to the echo bouncing off the walls behind her, as if the cave was playing a heated game of dodge ball with the sound. She punched the end of the tunnel with her fist, willing it to disappear. 'Break knuckles - bad idea,' she thought as she put her sore fist in her mouth. This wasn't a barrier like before - it was the end. Squirming backwards back out into the main tunnel, she started to retrace her steps, looking behind every rock for any sign of another tunnel.   
  
She heard a small click and with out thinking dove for the end, where the ceiling had first dropped down. She turned to find solid rock behind her, right where she had been standing. It was a decoy! And you fell for it you stupid sap, she berated herself. It was testimony to the immense age of the cave's rusty hinges that it had taken so long for the trap to close. Why hadn't she seen it before? Of course, there was only so much you could see with a flashlight, but she was never this slow! Was she loosing her touch? What if the trap had fallen while she was still trying to crawl forward into the tunnel, and not at the end walking back? She shuddered at her stupidity. One more mistake and you're going back where you came from, she growled to herself.  
  
"Look, look, look, look," she sang quietly to herself. So where was the real tunnel? Somewhere dark. . . She looked in every crevice and behind every rock she found, even walking the thin bridge of rocks that spanned the dark pool on the side of the cave. The pool! Don't let it be the pool, she prayed silently. She wasn't keen on wading through centuries old stagnant water full of rot. It would take forever for her clothes to dry in this humidity. As fun as these adventures were, sometimes they could get depressing. She tied her flashlight to a string of rope and lowered in into the pool. It looked about eight feet deep, with nothing visibly swimming through it. She shivered violently, remembering an encounter with some particularly nasty flesh-eating reptiles she had less than two years ago. The light from her flashlight slowly circled towards the end of the cave away from the door and then Ann could see it - a tunnel. Underwater.   
  
Well this is it, she told herself and she lowered her body into the dark pool. This is when you hold your breath for three minutes and swim into a dark tunnel of unknown origins not knowing how long it takes to swim through - so you either make it or die trying. Ho hum. Whoever designed this cave was a sicko - making her trudge through water, as if she had nothing better to do. Give me something to fight, like those ugly llorsks - just not underwater, please. It had been ages, it seemed, since she had practiced holding her breath underwater for longer and longer periods of time. She had started years back, when she was still a rookie, with only thirty seconds, a pitifully short amount of time. Several ultra-marathons and triathlons later she could hold her breath for several minutes without trying. Good thing I'm out of practice, she thought sardonically.  
  
Here goes.   
  
The water wasn't shockingly cold or gently warm, or anything poetic at all. The only thing she could really think to describe it as was wet, a very unflattering analogy. Something to tell your grandkids, she laughed to herself (as if!). At first it was a normal underwater scene - the slow, surreal movements, propelling forward using the rough rocks lining the tunnel, more thoughts full of curiosity of what lies ahead than on the fact that the air supply is limited. Of course, the tunnel would seem to go on forever, it was new and unexplored. She thought she saw something dart underneath her and brought her head up in surprise, dropping her flashlight as her hand scraped against the wall. Some air escaped her mouth in one large bubble. 'Good going, just let out all the air before you reach the end'. But it had looked suspiciously like an eel darting underneath her. There aren't eels in cave pools you idiot, she reassured herself. 'Oxygen starting to run out, starting to see darting movements'. She started to kick quicker, scratching her palms on the rocks in her hurry to rush by them. Was there an end to this tunnel? It struck her that she could easily die like this, swimming in this tunnel forever with the too familiar acidic burn in her lungs, the barely withheld panic that only the lack of oxygen can so artfully produce.   
  
And then the tunnel ended.  
  
Is that how the story of my life ends, she wondered. With a solid wall? The edges of her vision were now red-tinted. Another bubble escaped from her mouth as she pounded on the wall in desperation. She watched the bubble float up, and up, and up. . . She followed it and burst out into the cool air above.   
  
Once she could see straight, she found herself in another cave, this one completely smooth. It was circular, with a high curved ceiling. At one end was a pedestal with an object lying serenely on it. Ann gaped at it unbelievingly - there was no way it could be this easy! But it appeared to be true, because lying there for anyone, even a Muggle, to simply walk over and pick up was the book.  
  
She stared at it in awe before moving towards it. It was rather large, with uneven pages, the result of thousands of years of use. No doubt it was flooded with anti-magic charms. My but we guard our knowledge quite possessively don't we, she asked silently. One would almost think that the Mages didn't want the book to be found. The cover was moldy and half decayed, covered in eons of dust. She felt the familiar excitement surge through her, the yearning to turn the thick pages of the mysterious book before her. Her fingers itched to trace the words on the page. She picked it up carefully as if it were a fragile, holy relic and she were a messenger of God. Holding her breath, even the smallest shake might turn up the edge of a page, she slipped it into her attaché case, filing it away into the bottomless storage. It was now officially hers, she thought as she closed her knapsack.  
  
A grinding sound behind her told her that the room, as predicted had sensed the removal of the book. Having failed to guard the book from outside intrusion, the cave would now revert to Plan B: destroy the intruder. The pedestal where the book had been slowly lowered into the floor, leaving a black gaping hole in its wake. Ann cautiously walked over and shined her flashlight down into it. A long, dark brown tentacle was slowly feeling its way up the hole. Surely they can do better than that, she thought. She could either climb into the hole and kill whatever the hell this crap-ass creature was or she could high-tail out of the cave the same way she had come in.   
  
She looked over her shoulder at the small pool of water and thought of the tunnel far below that led back towards the entrance. Too convenient, she decided. She hadn't had much fun yet. She took out her dagger and made a couple practice swings. But something was wrong. She watched in fascination as one end of the dagger followed the other a full five seconds behind. Her vision was all funny, and not just because of the unstable glow from her flashlight. She waved her hand in front of her face and was amused that she saw only a pink blur, not the actual movement. Not prime conditions for fighting, she had to admit. What was wrong with her? Damn it! What was the point of coming down here if she wasn't going to have any fun? I can probably still fight fine, she thought.   
  
She flung her dagger at a spot on the wall. It cut smoothly into the stone, but six feet away from her destination. That wasn't right either - when Ann was at full concentration she had a straight aim. She hated to back down from a challenge - she could say that she hadn't been at her best and still defeated whatever was currently climbing out of the well. But she had never failed a customer yet - the best thing to do would be to go back the way she came, where she knew the route. The fact that her chances of surviving where better in that direction was also to be considered.   
  
"Maybe later, eh? My place next time?" she called down to the tentacle which was now only five feet from the top of the hole. Lightening-fast, she switched the batteries in her flashlight and tightened the strap on her knapsack. A glance at her watch told her it had been five hours. Can I make it out completely in seven, she wondered. Eight tops? The tentacle now reached the top of the hole and started slithering across the floor towards her. She made a face at the slime that covered it and jumped back into pool of water.   
  
She sank like a rock and wasted no time in propelling herself down its length. It seemed shorter this time, now that she knew where she was going. She glanced through her feet and saw no sign of whatever was behind her. What's the matter, can't even chase a little Muggle like me properly, she taunted silently.   
  
Suddenly the top of her skull connected with hard rock. She let out half of the breath she had been holding in surprise. The tunnel had been blocked by a solid wall of rock. She started to reach for her knapsack to find her Exe, but mentally groaned instead. It was useless - the potion was a liquid, it would simply float off the rock in and into her face, likely amputating and decapitating her simultaneously. And how in the world could she say the incantation underwater? It was better than nothing.  
  
She stuck the entire vial in a crack on the wall and pushed herself backward a bit, as there was no room to turn around. She muttered the incantation as well as she could, letting out more air than she intended in a small colony of bubbles, and shielded her face. A soft, dull thud and the sting of hot water on her arms told her than it worked. The firm tug on her foot, pulled her back towards the room she had been fleeing let her know that the tentacle had caught up with her.  
  
**(A/N: Anyone recognize the allusion to the well from The Ring? But this time Samara grew some more interesting appendages. . . .)** 


	8. Flight

8.Flight  
  
The sharp rocks on the side of the underwater tunnel began to fly past her, but in the wrong direction. She kicked her legs fiercely with the little room she had to move, but the tentacle had latched firmly onto her boot. Her fingernails were soon ragged and shredded from trying to claw at the walls. She reached down and quickly loosened the laces on her boots. In one movement, her boot shot off and she shot forward, wanting to put as much distance between the creature that was probably right now devouring her favorite boot and herself.  
  
Her movements became sluggish and forced as she pulled herself wearily towards the entrance. She had gone most of the way there, been dragged halfway back, and was now having the swim the entire length of the tunnel again on one breath. The edges of her vision were now tinted green and black. Suddenly she was out of the tunnel and could see the surface of the water, so very far above her. Before she could wonder whether she'd make it she was out and gulping in the wonderfully delicious damp air of the cave again. She scrambled over a rock at the end of the pool and kicked off her other boot, which pulled her sock off with it. She could see, even with the strange surreal light of the Nightglass, that the sides of her foot were now also a bright green. The infection had obviously spread. She accidentally stepped on a sharp rock in her flight towards the end of the cave and the skin around the infection broke, spewing green and yellow pus in a circle around her foot.  
  
"Gross!" she shouted. It was nothing compared to the sharp pain that now traveled from the sole of her foot to past her knee. Now was not a good time to have her leg fall off. She knew she shouldn't, but she risked looking back at the pool anyway and quickly wished that she hadn't. Yikes! There were now eight tentacles out of the pool, the longest one only ten yards away and gaining. She didn't see how a creature so large would fit through a tunnel as small as the one she had swam through. Suddenly, the wall behind the pool came crashing down into the water and the creature swarmed out, its green chest puffed up to full height. Problem solved.  
  
The creature was a sickly dark brownish-green and looked more like a giant slug than any kind of octopus. The eight tentacles that had followed Ann through the tunnel were merely the dressing on the cake. Its entire skin was full of tiny foot long tentacles, some with what looked like hooks on the end which Ann was certain were sharp enough to tear through rock - and skin. Ann had come across all kinds of deadly creatures before, but she had at least known what they were. She felt exposed, not knowing what its weak spots were or how it could be killed. It had to be able to be killed - everything had a weakness. Now that its liquid brown eyes could see her, the creature brought it tentacles over her head and blocked her exit. Another tentacle closed around her waist - she brought her arms up just in time so they wouldn't be pinned down. Before she knew it, she was hanging upside down in front of its beady eyes. She could see thousands of pointy teeth gleaming inside its slightly open cavernous mouth.  
  
'Strange creature!' a voice like a thousand whispers hissed in her head. She could feel magic in it's thoughts that made her eyes sting and her head spin. 'Are you the one who stole my book?'  
  
She had no answer for it. She always viewed herself as a kind of adventurer, a seeker of knowledge, but knew deep down that this rose- colored image of herself did little to disguise what she really was: a thief.  
  
'I sense no magic in you little one. Who sent you? How did a pathetic frail thing like you enter into my home?'  
  
Being called frail and pathetic in one breath made Ann loose her determination not to talk. "Nobody sent me! I got in here on my own?"  
  
'Liar. What happened to your magic if you are alone?'  
  
"I have no magic. What's more - I don't need any! I'm stronger than you without an ounce of magic - look how far I've gotten already!"  
  
'Most impressive little one. I don't know how you have achieved so much with so little. I consider myself honored to have met someone as noble, or as pathetically stupid, as yourself. And now, I eat you.'  
  
"No!" Ann screamed.  
  
It paused midway between twitching it's tentacle to throw her into it's mouth. 'No? Would you like to talk more, to stall the inevitable? What makes you think you're any different than any of the countless thousands of others who had died in this cave.'  
  
"I - I brought a gift for you!" Ann shouted, starting to dig around in her pack.  
  
'A gift!' It chortled with amusement. 'There is nothing in your human belongings that could have interest to me!'  
  
"Well, you have nothing better to do than to wait around and see, do you?" Ann reprimanded, hoping she sounded braver than she felt. It this didn't work it would eat her. It would probably eat her anyway but she would dearly love to take the monster with her. After wiggling free the thimble off its sharp end, Ann swiftly lifted the Basilisk's tooth out of her pack and jabbed it with all her might into the leathery skin of the tentacle holding her. It was like trying to carve through solid rock with a butterknife, but she continued to press down with her shaking arms, hoping against hope that it would make the smallest of scratches.  
  
A tremor passed through the slug's entire body and suddenly it threw her away from it and onto the hard stone floor. She felt nauseous and hung her head between her knees as she watched the show. The creature let out a shriek that threatened to burst Ann's eardrums and began to wave it's tentacles around as if drunk. Without further ado, it slumped to the floor with a loud thud. She shakily climbed to her feet, unsure of whether it was merely a trick. It had happened much quicker than she had anticipated. She almost felt sorry for it - it hadn't done anything wrong really. It was just some being that had been imprisoned here for several centuries in order to eat intruders. Sure it was bad that it tried to eat her, but it wasn't really evil. If she had magic maybe she could have simply knocked it out, not killed it. 'But then it will kill the next fool who wanders in here,' she thought. She swayed slightly and had to steady herself by putting a hand on the wall next to her. 'Definitely tired,' she noted. She always became philosophical when she was tired.  
  
She climbed over a few tentacles as if they were giant tree roots and stumbled towards the huge entrance hole, which was now the exit. The creature had reduced the real exit to rubble. She tripped over something to find the dead llorsk she had taken with her. Shrugging, she went ahead and flung it over her shoulders, noting that it had become a lot heavier. "Got my pack," she checked. Her pack was sturdy but had obviously seen better days. The front pockets had been torn open and the contents missing in action, but that was okay: there was nothing important there, save some food. "Got both my legs," she continued her mental checklist, looking down at her feet, one which was dirty with sludge water the other bright green around the edges and throbbing. "Well, almost," she amended. "Got my dead llorsk," she noted, giggled slightly at how funny she sounded.  
  
She walked back into the five doored large cavern as if she owned it. As soon as she stepped into the room the five caves were blocked off completely by a wall of solid rock. There was now only one exit from the room, and that was across the way and up those dratted stairs. "Stupids!" she called outloud. "Aren't you supposed to start bringing down the rock of wall while I'm still inside the cave, and I can run for it and slide under right before it closes off, just like in a movie?" She thought on this a second. "Rock of wall. . ." she mumbled. Something sounded wrong about that until it clicked, "Wall of rock!"  
  
The only thing preventing her from strolling across the room and leisurely walking back up the long stairs was the bright thing in the middle of the room. She watched fascinated as a ball of white fire slowly spiraled in the middle of the room, forming a body inside that looked like half cooked egg yolk. A head pulled itself away from the shimmering light, extending outwards gracefully, the same as the forming limbs which followed. When the transformation was completely, Ann had a full-grown Thranx standing in front of her.  
  
A Thranx was supposed to be a mythological creation (but then, so was the book she was carrying) that was constructed by the Dark Mages which was a combination of a summoned demon and a llorsk, their supposed creatures of choice, via some advanced flesh-forming. It was alike the llorsk in several respects, most notably its sharp teeth, its grey scaly hide, its ability and desire to eat anything, and its fierce determination. The Thranx was different in that it was slightly larger than human sized and more than ten times as strong. When it was first born (although it was never really born, just transformed as it had in the middle of the cave, summoned by powerful magic that made Ann's hair stand on end) the Thranx would be automatically attracted to whatever was closest, or smelliest, and would pursue it's quarry until either of their deaths. 'It's a good thing I'm covered in blood, what a better way to attract a Thranx,' she thought ironically. She briefly wondered whether to slit her own throat or not and avoid a painful death of being eaten but the beast lunged at her, giving her no time to question the best end to what she perceived as a meaningful life.  
  
She had no idea what had happened, but suddenly found herself floating through the air as if by magic. 'How?. . .' she started to think, but before she could finish the thought she realized she was falling rapidly, probably about to break her neck on the sharp rocks below. It took her brain a fraction of a second to catch up with her body, which had been thrown across the room. When she landed it felt more a soft thud than any bone-breaking landing. 'It must have bitten me,' she decided. She had a brief image of the second before the Thranx had hit her, its jaw opened wide to sink its teeth into her neck. A bite from a Thranx would explain why she felt only a slight thud upon hitting the ground, and also why her vision was slightly blurred: the venom causes drowsiness. Unfortunately, once it bites you, it will hunger for no other flesh. Deadly, single-mindedly stupid, and carnivorous does not make a good combination, she decided. She saw a shadow flicker over her and closed her eyes. She didn't want the last thing she saw in life to be the Thranx ripping through her numb abdomen and flinging bits of intestines to drip down the rocks around her.  
  
Instead, she called Severus's face to mind, his long dark hair, ironic smile, his fathomless eyes, his little wizardly way of looking like he always knew twenty times more than she did. She pictured him and Jack together on the beach, wading through the water, Severus refusing to take off his dark jacket or even roll up his sleeves even though it was the middle of summer. It wasn't a horrible way to die, she decided. Perhaps another woman would have wished, in these last seconds, that the relationship had gone farther, or even that Ann had revealed her feelings to him, but Ann was glad she hadn't. She didn't want to be remembered as someone silly and mushy. If Severus had been the type to romantically sweep Ann off her feet and bring her a dozen roses every day she would have moved to another island. She didn't go for emotional relationships, and neither did he. It was enough for it to end like this.  
  
After a while, she became bored thinking about Severus ('no offense meant to you, hon,' she thought). Wondering if the Thranx was going to get around to eating her anytime soon, she opened her eyes to discover her folly. It hadn't bitten into Ann's neck, but into the llorsk hanging on her shoulder - or so Ann assumed, as the beast was currently sitting next to her, digging heartily into the pile of dead llorsks Ann had landed on, which also explained the soft landing. Of course! It was designed to smell out its prey, but the llorsk would have smelled more strongly than Ann did, not to mention that it had gotten a taste of its flesh already. Ann started laughing out loud. It looked up at her and stopped in mid-bite, holding a llorsk with its head dangling on a thread in its huge claws, to sniff Ann. She held her breath, but it continued eating almost as quickly as it had stopped, obviously uninterested in her flesh. Obviously human flesh was an acquired taste. She had to smother her giggles as she climbed over the rock she had hidden the llorsk pile behind. She collapsed on the floor, and laid like a beached whale for several moments, regaining her breath and what little she had left of her consciousness.  
  
When she did finally sit up and begin to stagger towards the stairs, she wondered if the lyrinx did manage to scratch her after all. The walls were spinning dangerously and she still felt nauseously as though some furry creature was rolling around in her stomach. It reminder her of the food she had lost and she briefly wondered how long it had been since she'd eaten. She looked down at her watch, but either the light of the Nightglass was ill-suited for consulting watches or else her eyes were refusing to adjust. Nonplussed, she continued up the stairs, holding a hand against the damp wall to steady herself.  
  
Despite going uphill, the way back up was surprisingly and pleasantly shorter than the way down had been. Even once she climbed out into the room full of tomblike trunks the scenery flew by her, as if she were taking a car ride back from a vacation and having to look at everything backwards and with tons less anticipation. The wall of jagged glass flew by her as quickly as the dead Basilisk, which although it had been dead only a few hours looked as if it had been rotting for months (and smelled that way too!). "Back to the cream of the sign," she chuckled to herself. She shook her head - something was odd about what she had said. She puzzled over it all the way back, so absorbed in her thought that she almost forgot to dive through the whirling blades by the entrance. It wasn't until she was right underneath the huge cliff that it clicked. "Of course: the scene of the crime!" she exclaimed triumphantly. "Oh shit!"  
  
Her last comment was directed at the cliff above her, which although previously had been full of nooks and crannies ideal for climbing was now as smooth as a solid vertical pane of glass. She shook her head and grabbed hold of the rope she had left dangling down. She slipped several more times against the smooth surface than she would have liked. She was breathing heavily by the time she was a fourth up. By the time she was halfway up she was sure her arms were dying; she pictured her muscles slowly unraveling. Her entire body was shaking with fatigue, which she couldn't understand - she had been training for this for months. A little rock climbing shouldn't be so hard, but it was.  
  
There was no where to pause and regain her strength so she continued to climb at an agonizingly slow pace as she considered her options. She could drop back down and take a break and try again with considerably less strength, she could continue up until she collapsed and fell unconscious to the floor below, she could slide down and take a nap (she felt like she had never wanted anything so badly in her entire life as she needed a nap), or she could continue up to the top. Obviously the last option was the only suitable one. If she went back down she had a feeling she would never make it back up again. If she curled up into a ball and slept like she so badly wanted to, she doubted she would wake up any time soon. She had had enough meetings with self-imploding caves to want to find out what magic this one could spew out when its defenses had been shattered. It was really too bad most of the holding places for her books were destroyed in the process - they would make nice museums, she mused.  
  
She was so relieved when she made it to the top that she squealed in delight and promptly dropped back down several feet, rubbing her calloused palms raw. She cursed. It had been a long time since she had done something that stupid. "Almost five minutes, in fact." It was a poor joke even in the best of times.  
  
She clambered over the edge and laid there for several minutes, listening to her deep breathing. Finally she climbed once more to her feet and walked out of the cave. By the time she stepped out into the sunlight she had her sunglasses ready. She was surprised to find that it was nearing twilight already. Hadn't it been early morning just hours ago? Stupid question.  
  
She looked down at the mountain before her. Was it worth it or should she just go to sleep? Maybe she could roll down the mountain; if she tripped up here maybe the momentum would carry her all the way down. Resigned, she found a different trail than the one she had come up. This one wasn't as steep and went directly back to a town where there was a nice little inn waiting for her patronage.  
  
Severus had found her at last. It was only a matter of hours before he caught up with her. He had managed to track her all the way to this godforsaken mountain range in the middle of nowhere and now all he had to do was find the cave. He didn't even attempt to follow her tracks, knowing she had covered them too well, but choose his own rambling path. He had walked through the entire night, coming close to breaking his own leg several times, but he had finally done it. He could see the tree line from here.  
  
Once he was up, the folly of his misadventure struck him. He didn't know where he was going. True, he could always apparate away if he ran out of food, but it wouldn't bring him any closer to Ann. He stopped to readjust his Muggle hiking boots, which (although more bulky than the expensive wizarding shoes he normal wore) were surprisingly comfortable. Perhaps it was luck, perhaps it was fate - but at the moment he knelt he saw it there in the dirt beside his own boot: a footprint. The more he examined it, the more worried he became. It was made by a bare foot, a small one at that - most likely a young man or a woman. He followed the prints for a while at a slow, curious pace before breaking into a run. There were splatters of blood beside the prints. She had been bleeding. What worried him more was the oozing pus that was coming from her left foot.  
  
The trail he followed had its own story. It led to a path Severus never would have found on his own, the entrance being completely covered by brush. Not very far down the footprints became muddled. It looked like someone had lain down in the middle of the path and then gotten back up. But as the prints continued they became more and more blurred, as if the person in question was dragging their feet. The limping from her bad leg became even more pronounced. But then he found something else that made his blood run cold: a boot print, large like a man's. Several others joined of roughly similar size - thugs, from what Severus could guess. He quickly found where they went back into the trees on the side of the trail. From what he could tell, they had been following Ann alongside the path for a while, back since wherever the cave was, he guessed. He didn't like the looks of it - whoever these people were who were following Ann appeared to be chosen merely for size rather than any other endearing qualities. He tried to shake the impending sense of foreboding: Ann was capable of taking care of herself. She could fight like a maniac, or so she had purposely led him to believe. But then again, she was injured.  
  
When he came into a clearing farther down it was a different story. There were prints going in every direction and many places where the dirt and small rocks were kicked up. He could only find the booted prints leading away from the clearing farther down the trail. His heart skipped a beat. She had to be here somewhere - she had to be! He searched the area again for anything he might have missed. Had they taken her with them? Who the fuck where these people?  
  
Anger began to boil so furiously in him that he almost missed the one footprint he saw midway between two larger rocks. Of course Ann's prints would be harder to find! He had almost forgotten her habit of hiking by jumping from rock to rock instead of walking like any sane person. He inspected the rocks closely at the edge of the clearing and found one more print leading out into the forest. The prints went through the forest at what appeared to be a run, leaving many broken branches in their wake. Why would anybody bother attacking Ann and then not even try to follow her when she ran off the trail? Then again, why did they attack in the first place?  
  
You dope! He berated himself. She's only carrying a book worth more galleons than my entire family has ever owned and more powerful than half of the Dark Lord's Death Eaters, why else would a group of strange men follow and attack Ann? He hurdled over a log and stopped. The prints were gone. He turned to retrace them but didn't need to. Ann was huddled against the large log, her arm bent unnaturally, her clothes torn and ruffled, her head one bruised mass of blood. He dropped to his knees besides her.  
  
"Severus?" a voice whispered, dry as the sand on the beach he had left less than a week ago. He ignored her but began tending her injuries. There were several broken ribs, obviously a concussion, but mostly bad bruises and cuts. He couldn't find any life-threatening injury, yet the red glow to her face and hot feet of her forehead gave evidence to a deeper sickness. Her eyes were so glazed that she couldn't focus on his face even when he was leaning so closely that her breath tickled his eyebrows. She continued to mutter under her breath, but Severus could only decipher a few of the words, "Get. . .Yakov. . .what. . .attacked me. . .book. . .help."  
  
He continued to examine her. Now was not to time to cuddle and coo and make vague assurances that she would be all right. Only fools in stories did such things. Her legs were in fine working condition besides being scraped but the bottoms of her feet were a bloody mess. One of them was infected. He looked at it more carefully. He frowned slightly. This was definitely not good - Severus had seen this type of infection before, but how would Ann manage to poison the bottom of her foot?  
  
He shook his head again. Ann had just been traipsing around a cave full of deadly poisons and dangerous creatures, how else would she have become injured. Not to mention the entire mountain was warded. But then, only a wizard as skilled as Severus would be able to sense the poison that crept over the mountain. Without magic, it was lucky that the bottom of her foot was all she had manage to seriously injure. But it had been over twenty- four hours, Severus was sure, since this injury was made.  
  
He had to make sure. He slid his knife out his sleeve and pressed the point into the wound and peered deeper into it. Yes, just as he suspected, there was purple fuzz growing like a fungus deep within the wound. The poison was at work, and Ann didn't have much longer. She groaned in response. "Severus," she tried to talk again, her voice catching in her throat and coming out raspy. "Leave me, get the book. They don't have. . . .much magic. You can stop them."  
  
Severus ignored her. He started to gather her in his arms. She twitched furiously, trying to wiggle out of his grasp, but she was so weak that she barely resisted. "Get the book, you fool!. . .Don't have time for this. . ." She coughed, spitting blood down her front.  
  
"I don't care about the book. It's not worth it," he said calmly.  
  
"It's worth more. . .than five of my lives. . ." she argued.  
  
"Tens of thousands of all your bloody books would never equal your life, you fool woman!" he raged. "What did you think you were doing, coming here without me? Did you think I would stay at home like a good boy? Is that all I am to you? Bloody books. . ."  
  
Without another thought to the missing book, he apparated away, Ann curled up grudgingly in his arms.  
  
(A/N: A Thranx is a creature from the void in Ian Irvine's The View from the Mirror series, but they are highly intelligent, winged humanoid creatures who do actually eat humans. I love Irvine's void creatures. Can you tell?)  
  
Honk if you love Severus!


	9. Home

A/N: The author is still alive and successfully avoiding doing any real work. There is fluent cursing in chapter. Ann can become violent when in a bad mood. Just warning you.  
  
9. Home  
  
It was a bad day from the beginning. Severus Snape, the most feared professor at Hogwarts, awoke to find himself being cuddled like a giant teddy bear by a ten year old. To make matters worse, Jack groaned and gripped Severus's gray nightshirt even tighter every time he tried to disengage himself, as so Severus was embarrassingly caught by Sirius, his former schoolmate and tormentor, snuggling with a little boy he'd barely known longer than a month. Before he could explain, Sirius grinned, gave a mock bow and tip-toed away. It hadn't been a nice grin. It was the same grin Sirius and James had shared every time they were bored enough to bully Severus, which was often. "Damn," Severus muttered. His reputation stunk enough as it was - Sirius didn't buy the "evil potions master" façade that the rest of the school, including young Potter, accepted so readily. He would have to remember to be especially nasty today.  
  
Jack, being the brat he was, chose that moment to wake up. "Damn!" he repeated happily. Pleased with his newly learned word, he pressed his warm body closer to Severus's cool one and fell back asleep, pulling the deep blue covers closer around him.  
  
"You're getting soft," he admonished himself later as he glared into the bathroom mirror on the way to his morning shower. He made the water extra cold today, not even bothering to touch the warm knob. The cold water splattered off the black tiles back onto his calves. He was so used to waking up at dawn that even an hour or two later made him groggy the whole day. Not willing to disturb Jack, he had lain there for two hours staring at the ceiling. Although getting up at eight was extremely early for a child so young, Severus was ready to chastise him for taking so long. He even had a slightly witty comment ready to fire at Jack when the little brat sleepily opened his eyes and gave him a loud, sloppy kiss on his forehead. Severus was frozen in shock as Jack yawned in his face.  
  
"Brat," he muttered as Jack started jumping up and down on the bed, anxious for him to finish dressing and cook pancakes. "Brat, brat!" Jack repeated, jumping on one leg, then the other.  
  
It took Sirius less than five minutes to appear in the long, narrow kitchen after Severus. As much as the mongrel hated him, he couldn't deny that the potions master was an excellent cook. In addition to banging his big toe on the stove and burning his hand once in the fire, Severus found afterwards that Jack and Sirius had finished all but two of the pancakes, eating each one as soon as it was done. At least there was plenty coffee. He gritted his teeth. He had no one to take his anger out on because they both disappeared as quickly as the pancakes. It wasn't that he was actually hungry, it was more the lack of respect. He wished they had bothered to thank him so he could give them a look of disdain.  
  
He put the two remaining pancakes on a tray and soaked them in butter and syrup, just the way Ann liked them. Ann liked to eat a full, hearty breakfast, which Severus never understood since she usually fell back asleep until noon after waking at seven just to eat. The ways of woman were mysterious and strange.  
  
He knocked politely on the door, but didn't bother to pause before briskly walking into Ann's room. 'My room,' he corrected himself. 'On loan.' Ann sat straight up under her tangle of sheets as soon as she heard the click of the door opening. She blinked her eyes dazedly at the man walking around the room, setting the tray in front of her and opening the windows.  
  
"Don't!" she complained. "Too bright." He opened the shade half-way.  
  
"And I'm the one they say is a vampire," Severus commented.  
  
"You are - you stay up all night. You're insane. What is this? I don't want your bloody pancakes. You can take this syrupy concoction and shove it up your-"  
  
"Cheerful as always," he said dryly, sitting at the edge of the bed, making sure he was far enough away that her feet didn't touch him. She rubbed her red eyes furiously. Her face was still shiny from sleep and her short dark brown hair stood up on the left side of her face, but he thought she looked beautiful. If only she wasn't such a damn bitch! She had been awake for less than a day now after being in a coma three days, and had already tried to escape twice. The first time she simply walked out the door and down the beach. She would have made it back to her own house, too, if Severus hadn't been playing with Jack outside. The second time she climbed out the window - he had no idea how as she could barely walk. She neglected, however, to consider the fact that Severus's window was directly beneath her own. She had claimed at the time that she needed to go for a walk or a short run. Pending further inquiry she said that she was going to take back the book that was rightfully hers and that Severus was an ugly bastard and she hated his guts. Rather than becoming softer towards him after he saved her, she now proclaimed to hate him with a passion.  
  
Ann sniffed the pancakes suspiciously. He had put sleeping potion in her soup last night, but she had recognized the taste and thrown the bowl across the room, narrowly missing his head. Finally, her taste buds overcame her desire to annoy Severus, and she began eating in earnest. She glanced up briefly when she was half-way done. "Yeah, they're great and all if that's what you want to know, not that I give a fuck." Being bed- ridden had put Ann in the sourest mood Severus had seen yet - and that was saying something.  
  
She finished the last of her pancakes and downed the coffee in one gulp. She suddenly struggled to stand out of bed, throwing back the light blue sheets. He grabbed her arm, about to demand what she was doing, but she pulled away and shouted in his face, "What the hell is wrong with you? I'm freaking going to use the bathroom! Get off me!" She was shaking with anger. There was a red mark on her arm from where Severus had grabbed her.  
  
'Geez, can we say PMS?' Snape thought maliciously. "Of course, the bathroom is at your disposal, your Highness."  
  
She rounded back on him in the doorway to the connecting bathroom. "Look you slime-bucket: I didn't ask for you to bring me here, and I didn't ask for you to try to control my life! I've lived for twenty-five years without your help and I damn well don't need it now!" She slammed the door behind her.  
  
"You sure did a fine job of proving that!" he shrieked into the closed door. "You almost died! You hear me? You could have died from that bloody infection and you were too stubborn, too proud - no, too bloody stupid to care! How could you do that to Jack? How could you do that to me?!" But the door stared back blankly at him. He heard Ann moving around inside, seemingly ignoring him. "You want to go back and kill yourself? Well, fine - but don't expect me to come after you to pick up the pieces when you bloody fail!" It was the worst possible thing he could ever say to her, he knew, but he couldn't stop himself from releasing the bitter emotions he had held ever since Ann first left him.  
  
She gave up all pretense of ignoring him by opening the bathroom door and glaring at him. She was in her underwear. Black underwear. Her skin looked so smooth he wanted to reach out and touch it. He was so mad at her obvious taunting that he seriously considered hitting her. Maybe he should grab her hair and shove her head under water for several minutes until she was ready to listen to sense.  
  
"Is that so?" she whispered. "Well know this - I never fail. Never. If you continue to stand in my way, I will kill you." She gently closed the door behind her.  
  
He sat down heavily on the bed. Geez. He dragged himself out into the hallway to find Jack sitting on the stairs. "Why you yelling?" he asked. Severus shook his head. "Why you mad?"  
  
Severus sat down next to him. "Jack. . .sometimes people just don't understand what's best for them."  
  
"But if you care this much, why you yell?"  
  
Severus stared at him. "Cuh - care?" he sputtered. "That bitch! Look at everything I've done for her, and what does she do? Yell at me! Call me names like a child! Threaten to kill me!" He was spitting with rage. "She doesn't care about anything: herself, you, or me. . ." He held his aching head in his hands and groaned. Jack patted him on the back. "I'd better make sure she hasn't killed herself."  
  
He knocked on the door but received no answer. "Ann?" She didn't answer. "I'm coming in." The bedroom was empty, but water was still running from the bathroom. The lazy bitch was taking a shower. 'Great way to avoid me,' he thought. 'Take your time. See if I care.'  
  
He walked downstairs and paced his library aimlessly. His relationship with Ann had been taking a turn for the better a week ago, and now they couldn't exchange one civil word between the two of them. He supposed it was better this way. There was no point in getting close to people. The Dark Lord had been gone now for over a decade, but he still couldn't allow himself the leisure of pretending to be normal. If he were a normal wizard, he would be worried over nothing more than who would win the World Cup that Britain was hosting this year. Instead he was tracking rumors about ancient curses and century old books and dark forests while babysitting a woman with a death-wish and a serial-killer escaped from Azkaban. It was strange that the two grown-ups required stricter watching than Jack, who was only ten but still independent and competent. "Why me?" he moaned out loud.  
  
'Stop that!' he commanded of himself. Potions masters don't moan and they don't show weakness. He picked a random Dark Arts book off one of the cherry bookshelves and tried to read. When he came across a passage about curses, however, it brought back such strong memories of Ann's trip that he ended up chucking the book at the opposite wall. 'I'll talk to her,' he decided. 'Just talk.' She would have to listen to sense. He would tell her everything: how he had been a Death Eater, and why that enabled him to hear the rumors, and how her trying to rescue her lost book was a dangerous mission. She would have to understand. She would hate him, understandably, but she would reconsider her plans. If she knew that Death Eaters were after her she would have to stop. She would have to. Surely she could figure out that she would come after the book? Surely she could figure out it would be an ambush?  
  
Determined, he swept back down the narrow hallway to the stairs. Jack was no where to be seen. He knocked on the door but received no answer. "Ann? We have to talk. I have to make you understand. You won't like this, but you'll understand. . ." He put his ear to the door. Silence.  
  
He opened the door to find the room abandoned. The water in the shower was still running. 'That woman must take the longest bloody showers of anyone I've ever known,' he guessed. He went back down the hallway and sat on the top step of the stairs. Something irked him in the back of his head. There was some small detail that kept running around, trying to find a place to be interpreted. What? What? Oh, yes - the room had changed slightly. Ann must have cleaned up.  
  
He went back in her bedroom and looked around. The covers were pushed almost all the way off the bed and her bag had been moved from the chair to. . .or had she taken it with her into the shower? In less than a second he flew across the room and flung open the bathroom door. He was greeted by an empty shower and an open window. He ran to the window and looked outside to find nothing but trees. She had escaped.  
  
"Damn you!!!"  
  
Ann couldn't see anything through all the grime that coated the window, especially on a night this dark, but if she pressed her ear to the crack at the bottom she could just make out voices inside. She had followed Yakov from his house to this public swimming pool which had long been abandoned. He had walked into the bathhouse as if he owned it, but Ann had gotten close enough to see that his eyes darted around furtively as he entered. Right now she was lying stomach down on the roof and trying to determine what she was up against. There were several voices inside: a man with a deep, gravely voice, a woman with a high, nasal voice, another man with a curt voice, and finally Yakov, who spoke with a thick Russian accent. The other three had been speaking in French when she first climbed up, but when Yakov entered they all switched to English.  
  
"Have you had any success?" Ann heard Yakov's asthmatic voice float through the window.  
  
"None, sir. There seems to be an imperturbable charm on this case. We need to discover the key - probably some kind of password, I would guess. Without it, we could tear the case to shreds and not find a thing."  
  
"Damn it! You should have kept that blasted woman with you! What were you thinking, just leaving her there to walk away?"  
  
The woman spoke. "There was no way that girl did any walking. You didn't see the condition she was in. A strong wind could have knocked her over. She was covered in blood, probably injured by some animal that attacked her in the woods, and her foot was infected with what looked like a strong poison."  
  
"You still should not have left it to chance that she would still be there when you returned!" Yakov shouted, enraged that his will was being disputed.  
  
"Our priority was the book, sir. That woman obviously had help from an outside source. If had stayed, we might have risked loosing the book."  
  
"You could have handled it."  
  
"This Wyvern fellow is extremely powerful. The only reason we have the book is because we ran into some Muggle he was using to deliver the book. If we had stayed. How can we find one faceless Muggle in thousands? He has probably erased her memory by now," the deep voiced man spoke.  
  
Ann heard furious pacing. 'Just like Severus,' she thought fondly. But then she remembered she was supposed to be mad at him, so she quickly pushed the thought away. She grimaced at their conversation; she knew she should be happy that they weren't expecting her at all - they would only prepare for a direct magical attack, not Muggle stealth. They would not even suspect her, but assume she was acting under orders. She knew this should please her because it meant they were unprepared, but their assumptions that they were up against a powerful wizard - a man - it irked the hell out of her. 'If only I could show them exactly how strong I am. . .' she thought, picturing the repayment she'd give them for taking her book last week, and worse, her pride. "Damnation!" she whispered to herself.  
  
". . .contact me at once."  
  
"Oh course, sir. Should we keep a full guard here?"  
  
"No, go ahead home, Estella, no one knows about this place. Even Reilly doesn't know where we are," Yakov answered. Reilly! This was news to Ann. Reilly was one of the most slippery characters Ann had the misfortune of knowing. He wasn't actually an employee of Hegemony, Inc., nor did he hold any official position of power, but he somehow exerted influence over the entire company in ways Ann had yet to find out. It was Reilly, for instance, that had converted Yakov from the emotional but reliable man she knew into this lying animal below. She'd never even seen Reilly, nor did she know his first name. His! She caught herself making the same assumption that most book thieves made about her. Maybe Reilly was a woman? 'And maybe her first name is Mary,' she thought wryly, with a small grin.  
  
She waited more than ten minutes after Yakov left. One man and a woman left the building and disapparated, but one more drove up in a motorcycle and went inside. She also had to account for the possibility that there might be more people inside. Not the mention the fact that should couldn't discount anti-thieving wards; although since they hadn't even bothered to put one around the bathhouse to prevent people like Ann from listening in they couldn't have put up many wards at all. They sounded extremely confident - too confident. Either they were incredibly stupid or else they had reason to be. They had put up the anti-Muggle wards, of course, making Ann's head buzz faintly with worries of missed appointments. But Ann was used to doing and thinking several different things at once; she left her worries to another section of her brain and used the rest to concentrate on the task at hand.  
  
While planning the attack, she realized exactly just how incompetent and unprepared she was. Sure she had what equipment she had been able to sneak out from under Severus's excessively long nose, but she felt so exposed without a definite plan. Sneak in, find book, run like hell. Usually when she did something dangerous it was after months and months of agonizing research and strict practice.  
  
'No, you can do this,' she told herself. She had her knives hidden in her boot and sleeve, her pixie-dust to cover her tracks, a few healing and explosive vials of potions tucked into her pouch. She was woman enough to take them all on and win. The lack of security continued to disturb her, but she would deal with what happened as it came.  
  
The strangest thing was, she couldn't stop thinking about Severus and Jack. She wondered for a brief instant if she had let someone know where she was, just so they'd know if something went wrong. What would Jack do without her? She shook her head. What was she, his self-appointed guardian angel? Severus would take care of him. Severus. She found she didn't want to think about him at all.  
  
After searching, she found a window that had been broken, leaving only an empty frame. It was on the opposite side of the building from where the voices had come, but at least this way she'd have a chance to sneak into the room unseen. 'Or be caught wandering around trying to find it,' she amended. She traced the outline of the knife in her sleeve nervously.  
  
The room was dark except for the moonlight that fell in the window after her. She let go of the ledge and dropped down to the ground. She held her breath, hoping no one had heard the slight noise she had made upon landing.  
  
Silence.  
  
She was in a dressing room of some sort. She could make out showers to her left, and what looked like gaping holes on her right - no, those must be either changing rooms or bathroom stalls, but she was too creeped out by them to want to get any closer. She found a door along the opposite wall, but found it was stuck. Damn! It took her a good five minutes to pry it open without making any noise, and then ten more minutes to open it. She had to go millimeter by millimeter because the hinges were well rusted and would creak otherwise. Outside was a hallway that led to a lobby. She peeked out into the lit lobby. There was a front door on at the far end, a desk closer to her. A man sat at the desk, his back to her, as he was facing the front door. Time for her darts. She dipped one in her strongest sleeping potion and shot it at the man's neck. Bull's eye!  
  
He didn't even make much of a sound when he fell. This was good. She edged along the wall and peeked out. There was the outside guard, his back to the door. She sneaked across to the short hallway that led to the changing room on the other side. 'Oh, look at me, going in the men's bathroom!' she thought. 'Heh, heh, you pervert, you.'  
  
It was as easy as annoying Severus (which was extremely easy indeed). After checking the room for any lurking villains, she strode over and took the case. "Book, book, I love you!" she whispered to it, snuggling the case close to her breast. She didn't think she could get any happier than she was now. She turned to go, but suddenly found herself surrounded by a gold haze.  
  
And she had assumed they wouldn't have any wards up. She tried to go through it, but it stopped her. It was like trying to cross a brick wall. She heard running footsteps coming from the lobby.  
  
'Fine, try to stop me, go on,' she dared them. It was taking a risk, a huge risk, but she couldn't let herself be captured again and it was the only plan she could think up on the spot. Wards are set into the ground - mess up the ground and the ward will fall. Unless made otherwise, for instance, you could crawl underneath a ward like it was a fence if you were capable of burrowing underground. But she had a more convenient way: she took out her vial of EXE and threw it against the floor on one side of the ward circle that encompassed her. It was extremely dangerous to be in such close contact with the substance, but what was life if not dangerous. The outside guard was here. He started to reach through the ward towards her, his wand outstretched and ready to stun. Without hesitation, she made herself as small as possible and hid behind her case, which had the strongest imperturbable charm on it money could buy, and said the incantation.  
  
She must have passed out from the impact, because the next thing she knew she was lying against a moldy wall. Her head throbbed, and her entire body felt sore and broken. After a few moments of dizziness and after a minute or so of retching, she felt well enough to lift her head and look around. The only good thing about the explosion, besides crumpling the ward, was that it had thrown the man against the wall too. He was still passed out. She crawled closer, ready to use another vial of sleeping potion to ensure that he stayed that way when she saw she had been mistaken. His head had cracked open against a corner of a pillar he had sailed past.  
  
'Oh good,' she thought numbly, 'now I'm a murderer. Murderess. Fuck!'  
  
She limped out the door and back across the lobby to the other changing room. There she stopped and sat on a dusty bench, opening the case. It was illogical and stupid, but she couldn't go through another minute without even looking at the book. She only wanted to touch it, just for a second, to make sure. It was there, sure enough, and as beautiful as it had been the first time she laid eyes on it. She inhaled it's wonderfully musty aroma and brushed her cheek against the cover. She sighed.  
  
'Stop that now!' she commanded herself. She put the book away - she would read it on the flight home. She had a night flight and a seat by the window, and would have it finished within the eight hours and several different planes it would take to arrive at London. She climbed out the window with considerably more difficulty that it had taken to climb in. The trees of the surrounding wood were just beginning to block her view of the bathhouse when she heard the pops signifying the arrival of more wizards and witches. No doubt the ward had served more as an alarm than anything else. She shuddered to think how close she had been to being trapped like a fly in a jar. Thankfully, they all ran inside first instead of immediately searching the grounds.  
  
She wasn't worried. They couldn't follow her using magic because of the pixie dust she had used, and if they managed to find her and try to stop her she would run - a moving target was much harder to hit with curses and they wouldn't be able to keep up with her for ten miles, magic or no. She had her book, her pride was newly intact, she could beat up anybody that threatened her, and in a couple of months she would go to London to exchange her goods for a shitload of money. Life was good.  
  
'Maybe life isn't that great afterall,' she amended as she walked down the path towards Severus's house on the cliffs. She prepared herself to be as cold as possible. 'I won't show emotion, I won't! I won't let that git bait me. I'll walk in, cool as you please, thank him stiffly for his hospitality and say that I'm there to pick up Jack and go home.'  
  
And then it would be time to move on. She couldn't stay in the same place, not with a new project. It wasn't in her nature to be tied down. Severus had no right to know any of her business anyway. If he tried to stop her she would sock him in the nose.  
  
As the glow from the windows of the house grew larger and larger in the still night air her stomach shrank tighter and tighter. It had been a couple days since she had ran away - no, she didn't 'run away,' she left. 'Run away' made it sound like she was doing something she shouldn't. Severus was the only one who thought she shouldn't go. Even Sirius had been enthusiastically for her adventure, but then again his judgment wasn't completely reliable as he had apparently been caged up for a very long time and was still caged up by Severus all summer.  
  
She tried to picture Severus's look of fury when she explained this to him, not staying long enough for him to argue back. The only reason he was so adamant about her going was because of the stupid rumors he had heard - mysterious activity in Albania, searches for books that never should exist. . . He was afraid someone would use her to find Lyrinx. . .no, she wouldn't even think about it. The possibility of anyone finding her, much less using her, was absurd. She was M. A. Wyvern and she had outsmarted the best of the best. 'Ha, I am woman, hear me roar,' she sang to herself.  
  
'In fact,' she realized, mulling over the details, 'he probably doesn't give a shit about me at all. Which is fine. He just wants to make sure no one gets that book.' Well, he didn't have to worry, because her next project would be taking her eventually to Antarctica or the North Pole - one of the poles distinctly mentioned in references to a book on using mind control over animals. She had her own commissions for books, whether Severus admitted it or not. 'Gosh, it's too bad some of us have lives,' she thought maliciously.  
  
She had herself almost ready to smack him by the time she knocked politely on the door. It was less than a minute later when it was opened by a disheveled looking Severus. She stepped into the parlor. He closed the door behind her and followed.  
  
"The business has been taken care of," she said nonchalantly. "I've come for Jack. It was exceedingly generous of you to look after him while I was away - what the blazes happened to you?"  
  
She had been avoiding his gaze but turned to find that his face, under bright light, was drawn and large shadows were under his eyes.  
  
He stared at her. "I should bloody be asking the same thing. Look at you - you're covering in grime, there's blood on your case, I can smell it - you're face is covered in bruises. You look like you've been run over by a rampaging Hippogryph. I've haven't gotten a wink of sleep in nearly two weeks because of you! You go traipsing halfway across the world and then just walk in like nothing happened." His words were angry, but his voice was soft ('and silky', she added). He looked distracted.  
  
"What? What's wrong? Did something happen?" she demanded. Was it Jack? Her heart hammered in her ears.  
  
"There have been some strange things happening. Black's godson, Potter, awoke a few days ago with a sharp pain in his forehead, where his curse scar is. The last time that happened, according to Albus, was when Voldemort was at Hogwarts."  
  
"But it doesn't mean-"  
  
"A group of Death Eaters paraded around at the Quidditch World Cup earlier this evening, ending in the Dark Mark being displayed over the area. I just heard the news a few hours ago." He was looking out the dark window, his back to her. She could see the weariness in his back. "All this. . .you see, I was worried. But if you don't even care about yourself, I don't see why I should."  
  
"Because I didn't ask you to! When will you grow up? This is serious - Death Eaters exposing themselves publicly? And you're still being a - mhpp- " Severus covered her mouth with his thin hand. He drew her close to him and whispered in her ear, "Shhh, shhhh." She turned her head so that her cheek was pressed against his robe. He stroked her back so lightly a spider could have been crawling across it. She tried, unsuccessfully, to stop herself from shivering.  
  
She pulled away from him just enough to look up into his obsidian eyes. "I still hate you," she said, but the venom that she had held in wait to attack him with was slowly leaking away. She felt weak and numb. What did any of it matter?  
  
He heard her, but not what she said, only what she didn't say. He nodded. "You miserable old-" she tried again, but he stopped her from talking again, stroking her cheek with his long fingers.  
  
"Welcome home," he murmured, a small sarcastic grin on his face. She felt her lips tremble and wasn't sure if she wanted to cry or laugh or scream, or perhaps all three at the same time. He leaned down and kissed her softly on her cheek, then the corner of her mouth, then he was kissing her for real this time and she was sure she was going to scream. His lips became, for a second, an extension of her own. She felt his hands reached up and brushed lightly through her hair.  
  
She couldn't stand anymore - she was ready to explode. Or kill someone. While eating ice cream.  
  
"Do you have any ice cream?" she asked, jerking her lips away from his.  
  
He blinked. "Ice cream?"  
  
"Yes, I'm hungry," she said over her shoulder, striding into the kitchen as familiarly as if it was her house.  
  
He watched her disappear into the living room on the way to the kitchen. Women! He walked out the front, slamming the door behind him. The path was dry and dusty but the night air was perfect for helping make the knot in his groin disappear.  
  
A/N: I will try to update more often than once every six months. Please don't eat me! I promise to be a good girl!  
  
Thanks to Wingsong, Lisa Beattie, MegMeg the one and only, Lady Slytherin3, and Bex the Bold for reviewing! Thanks especially to Lisa Beattie for threatening to kill me! I love death threats - they keep me on my toes and remind me, every now and then, to update.


	10. Letters

A/N: I'm so far behind in schoolwork I figured it didn't matter if I spent what little time I have updating. Note: Jack is now TEN not six (there will be a reason for this). So…enjoy this update. I have one-third of the next chapter written, but I've learned to not make any promises on when it'll be ready.

Thranx liiiiiiiives!!!!

* * *

10. Letters

Jack sat down on a pile of clothes on the floor. "Wha'cha doing?" he asked.

Sirius looked up from a crumpled letter that had obviously been read and reread many times. "I'm leaving," he admitted. He immediately felt guilty that he hadn't said anything before, as if he were sneaking away. A ten-year-old wouldn't understand why Sirius would suddenly leave.

But, to his surprise, the small boy seemed to accept the fact. "When?"

"As soon as possible." Should he say something else, about how he'd like to stay here with Jack?... Well, that was only a half-truth. He liked Ann and Jack's company, but he loathed being near Severus. Besides, he longed to see Harry again. His dreams were full of half-forgotten memories, the Mauraders rampaging through the school, James sitting in the back row of the classroom, punching Sirius in the back, laughing, his green eyes sparkling – no, it was Harry who had green eyes. Sirius would awake confused, his sheets twisted in a knot. "You remember my Godson, Harry?"

Jack nodded. Sirius had told story after story about Harry: an edited version of how they met, how effortlessly he flew through the air on a broom – half the things he made up, but it made him feel better. And Jack was an excellent listener. He would make sand castles and listen to Harry's real and supposed adventures with relish.

Despite only knowing his Godson for two months, Sirius bragged daily about Harry. Severus sometimes overheard him and finally threatened to vivisect him if he heard the boy's name one more time. "Is Harry going to come here and visit?" Jack asked. "Is he going to live with us?"

Sirius's gaunt face saddened. "No, Harry can't live with me. I'm on the run, remember? But someday we will, and we'll both come back and visit you." Sirius had been planning for their life together even since he met his best friend's son. Meeting Harry had opened up a whole new world of possibility from the dark, single-visioned vengeance Sirius had known before. As soon as he was free… They could eat sundaes together in the middle of Diagon Alley or go to the beach together. He could picture Harry's scrawny legs, brilliant in the sunlight against the white sand. Harry would probably like Jack.

Jack hopped up from the clothes pile he was nestled in and sat on the bed next to Sirius. "You're visiting Harry now?"

Sirius sighed. "In a way. I won't be actually _with_ him, but I'll find somewhere nearby his school. I need to be near him. Remember how he woke up a week ago with his scar hurting? I showed you the letter." He looked down to the crumpled paper in his hand. "Dumbledore said the last time it hurt…was because Voldemort was close."

Jack immediately jerked his head up. "Does it have something to do with the Dark Mark at the World Quidditch Cup last night?" Ann and Severus had had a hushed conversation about that over dinner.

Sirius's eyes widened. "You're a smart kid." He rubbed Jack's stubby hair. With Jack's quirky aloofness and Sirius's intense spontaneity, they hadn't become the best of friends, but had managed to achieve a kind of mutual intimacy.

Jack merely nodded. "You think Voldemort is back?"

"Merlin, I hope not! It just doesn't add up – Harry's scar and the Dark Mark and all the rumors Snape's been hearing. I can't just sit here – I have to be there. Something's been up ever since that rat wormed his way out of my hands. I want to be close to Harry incase something happens."

"Noble sentiments, Black," a quiet voice spoke from the doorway. "By all means, please go get yourself killed. It will be one less nuisance to society." They turned to find Severus hovering in the doorframe. "But," he said, drawing out each word, "I would suggest you stay away from Potter – and Hogwarts. Things are happening, Black, in the _adult world_ you don't want to get messed up in."

Sirius grit his teeth. Ignoring his last comment, he protested, "I could no more leave my own godson than I could stop breathing!"

"You would only put the boy in danger. Stay away. A lot of things are happening at Hogwarts this year regardless – the media, for one, will be swarming over the place. Dumbledore would agree with me."

"Would he? Fine – I'm not going to listen to you, greasy git, but I was _planning_ on conversing with Albus anyway. If he suggests I stay away, for Harry's sake-"

"Which he will."

"Then I'll follow his advice." He crossed his fingers behind his back.

"Good." Severus looked smug.

"I didn't ask _you_ Snivellus, I was merely talking to myself."

Severus's hair stood on end. He snarled at Sirius. "Don't call me that!" Jack quickly stood between the two men and they amazingly calmed down, silently agreeing to argue later.

"Why are obsessed with Potter? You've only met him once, and even then only shortly. You act like he's your son."

"He is!" Even Sirius looked slightly surprised at his own violent outburst. "He's all I have left; I don't expect you to understand, Snape. You don't know anything about friendship or loyalty… I'm his guardian; I guess I'm all he really has for a family."

"He has those idiotic Muggle relatives."

Sirius shook his head. "You didn't see his face light up when I asked him if he would live with me once my name was cleared. I swear he looked ten years younger, like a child. He had such a – he was so hopeful – I can't imagine how much he hates it there, to agree to live with someone he'd just met and had spent years hating. He didn't even think twice before accepting…" Sirius trailed off from his monologue.

"Poor Potter," Severus crooned. "We must all moan and beat our chests because he isn't fed enough candy over the holidays."

"Don't play dumb with me, Snape," Sirius barked. "You remember as well as I do how badly Petunia treated her own sister. I remember Lily, after the holidays-"

Severus raised a questioning eyebrow.

"Nevermind," Sirius said quickly. "But you know how much Petunia must have hated Lily. Do you really think she'd treat Lily's child any better?"

Severus's face was made out of stone. "My memory's as clear now as it ever was, Black." With a final scathing look, he swept back out into the hall.

"Damn him!" Sirius threw a shoe across the room.

"Damn him," a smiling Jack repeated.

Sirius sighed.

"You're not coming back, are you?" Jack asked.

Sirius cocked his head. "What does that mean? Don't you want me to come back?"

"I don't think you'll ever come back here," Jack stated solemnly. They stared at each other. Jack stood and walked out the room.

"Strange kid," Sirius muttered, shoving Harry's letter in his pocket. Most of his things were borrowed and belonged to Severus. Without anything to slow him down, it was time to hit the road.

* * *

"You're leaving too?"

Severus turned to find Ann peering in the doorway of the library. "Yes," he answered. "I must return to Hogwarts. The only reason I stayed so long in the first place was because of that bast– because of Black. (I still haven't figured out how he manages to slip away without my seeing him.) We have a lot of scheduling to do for the upcoming year. Hogwarts is hosting the Tri-Wizard Tournament." Ann widened her eyes, impressed. "I tell you this in the strictest confidentiality." He was only half kidding. Ann was reclusive and corresponded with the wizarding world only by mail.

"Maybe he has an Invisibility Cloak."

He made a noncommittal grunt. "Perhaps." A series of thoughts flew by his mind – Harry's head appearing in Hogsmeade this past year, none of the portraits seeing Black all year. Maybe Potter _had_ loaned his Invisibility Cloak. But no, that wasn't right either, for Potter hadn't even met Black until the fiasco in the Shrieking Shack. Besides, Dementors couldn't be fooled by Invisibility Cloaks. "At least we'll be no where in sight of each other. He might even be caught and sent back to Azkaban. But I mustn't get my hopes up."

She smiled. "He wasn't that bad, was he?" She wasn't crazy about Sirius's overbearing personality, frankly it tired her out, but did he really deserve the Dementors?

He gave her a Look. "What are you doing? Not chasing…" He left the sentence unfinished. They had discussed the Book mainly in what had been left out of conversations more than what had been said.

She raised an eyebrow. "If I were, I wouldn't exactly tell anyone about it, now would I?"

He frowned. They were too alike.

"I'm moving on. I've stayed in one place far too long already, and that was only because of Jack. But he has no reason to stay. What little family he has doesn't want to see him, and I think the feeling's mutual. Besides, I'm sick of the heat. I miss Canada,"

Severus shook his head. Wherever Ann was going, she surely wasn't going to tell him the truth. He didn't believe for a minute that she was going where she said she was. "Will you send Jack to school?"

"_Send_ him? Lord, no. It's not my style. I'll tutor him myself. But neither of us have patience for much schooling."

Severus was worried. Did Ann plan on teaching Jack at all? It was not too early by any means to think of the future. Next year Jack would be legally required to wizarding education. Jack couldn't go through the world uneducated, he was too smart for that, and if there was one thing Severus appreciated it was intelligence. But Ann continued as she crossed the room to sit on the windowsill. "He does seem to pick up a lot of things on his own, though, doesn't he?"

"I hate to think how far behind he'll be…" He trailed off. He was about to end: "When he goes to Hogwarts." But who knew where Ann and Jack would be in a year. Certainly Ann knew she would have to find a wizarding school eventually. Not tutoring a young wizard could be dangerous. A wizard without a proper sense of control of his magic was a menace to himself and to society.

"If you're so worried, why don't you adopt him?" she teased him.

"I'd be a horrible parent. I have no patience for children."

"Me either." She smirked. "But I'm glad to have him with me all the same. Having a wizard around can be useful every now and then." She laughed. "When I told my sister I'd never have children because I was too self-absorbed she called me a cold-hearted bitch." She shrugged. "But she's stuck in Kentucky with four of her own, so I guess it's _her_ loss. I wouldn't trade lots with her for the world."

Severus shook his head. He knew better than to ask Ann about her family. To Ann, they were non-entities. The only thing Ann had said about them was that they were "Southern Baptists who aren't interested in anything more than wherever their own blindness leads them."

And he understood. For him, too, family was a matter of choice.

"So what _are_ you hunting next?" He sat down on the couch in front of the bookshelf he had been rummaging through. He studied her. With the light from the window behind her, it looked like she was surrounded by a blue aura.

She shrugged. "State secret. I think I'm going to pause to do some more research." He rolled his eyes. As a student, he had spent more time in the library than his entire House put together, but Ann put him to shame.

At the same time, he felt (not for the first time) a twinge of jealousy. Here was Ann, traveling the world, browsing foreign archives, using nothing but her own cunning – while Severus was stuck wiping the noses of seven classes of brats all year, dependent on a man who had become a father to him simply because he had no one else. He was merely teaching about life while Ann was actually living it.

But she was being very quiet. "And?" he prompted.

"And…" She hesitated and looked (of all things) a bit embarrassed. "And…I think I'd like to do some writing of my own." When he didn't respond immediately she continued. "I don't care what you think! No, don't roll your eyes at me, you condescending bastard, I'm writing because I feel like it, not because I'm too lazy to read more."

By then he was laughing. He pushed his hair out his face. "I think it's a brilliant idea," he said plainly. "You're intelligent, articulate, blunt. I'm sure whatever you have to say will be worthwhile and memorable."

"Oh, stop." She beamed. "Well, I've read a lot of history books – wizard history – and a lot of them are, shall we say, _outdated_!" She looked very indignant. "Muggles do a much better job of updating their history books. Wizards just assume that accounts written hundreds of years ago are unbiased, but primary sources can't benefit from a long-term perspective. Not to mention the lot of them are boring as hell _and_ ninety times out of a hundred are written by men."

"This is mostly true. Although I think you'll find there is more equality among the sexes among wizardkind."

She nodded in agreement. "I'm inspired by the fact that two of Hogwarts' founders were women. That far ago, in Muggle times women were nothing more than baby-makers. And didn't Britain have a witch for Prime Minister in the nineteen century?"

"We did?"

There was a lull in the conversation. "Are you leaving today?"

"Yes."

"I was going to invite you for lunch at my house since you're packing. But you'd have to cook."

He couldn't help letting a short laugh escape him. Although the two didn't necessarily go together, Severus was both an excellent Potions Master and cook. As smart as she was, Ann couldn't (or refused to) follow recipes. The last time she made cake she dumped in a bunch of salt instead of sugar. Jack was the only one who ate it. "What am I, a house elf?" he grumbled. "You think I have nothing better to do?"

She sniffed. "Suit yourself." She stood.

"I really have to be going," he admitted. "I don't have much baggage. If I apparate back home within the hour I can make it to Hogwarts by tea time."

"Alright." He could tell she was starting to feel awkward. He debated what to say. It was pointless to make plans or promises to keep up a correspondence. Either Ann would write or she wouldn't. He found a neutral topic to end with.

"I'd like to read it – whatever it is you're writing. I'm sure it would be…intriguing." He sneered lightly, lest she thought he was _too_ eager.

But her face closed immediately. "It's private. I'm not going to show you a thing. Have you seen Jack?"

"No." She had changed topics so suddenly he was caught off guard. "We went for a swim this morning. Or, should I say, he went for a swim while I soaked my feet in muddy sand."

"I don't like swimming as much as hiking. But it's a different world down there." He was loosing her. She hated small talk. He wanted to say something, but he didn't know what. "Well, I'll let you…apparate, or whatever." She turned to leave, but paused in the doorway. "Look, Severus – it's not every day I meet someone as unpleasant as myself." He gave her a wry smile. "So keep in touch."

With that, she left.

But he didn't hear from her again until the beginning of winter.

* * *

When Ann finally did owl, the length of her letter made up for all the missing months. One Saturday morning a week after the Potter boy almost got his brains bashed by a dragon's tail during the First Task, he was surprised when an owl dropped a rather thick package in front of him during breakfast. As his private correspondence usually took advantage of other means of communication or arrived at night, he was annoyed to find interest raised among the faculty. Minerva seemed especially anxious to see what he received.

He needed only glance at his name on front to recognize her handwriting. How many stacks of loose papers had he seen over the summer with the same illegible scrawl? It had to be from Ann.

He put it aside carelessly, masking his features into a disdainful look. It was obvious to anyone watching that this was neither something of importance nor of interest. But his heart was racing with excitement. It would be like a breath of fresh air after suffocating under loads of incompetent Potions essays. He was very keen to see what she had sent him. The package was much too thick for simply a letter. It was all he could do to keep on calmly drinking his tea instead of running out the room and all the way to the dungeons. Luckily he was a master at concealing his emotions.

"Early Christmas present, Severus?" Minerva asked, leaning forward to look at it closer.

"Hardly," he snorted. "It's a business matter, Professor McGonagall."

"I see, _Professor Snape_," she answered sarcastically.

Damn those eternally meddlesome Gryffindors! Minerva was always trying to convince him to run down to the Three Broomsticks with her and some colleagues. He supposed she thought he didn't have enough to do on his own. If she weren't twenty years his senior he would suspect that she were hitting on him. He wasn't popular or sociable in his schooldays and certainly wasn't now.

Upon scanning the Great Hall, he was relieved to find that at least Potter and his Dream Team wasn't there; nor was Malfoy's crowd present. He had enough to worry about – Karkaroff was bugging him incessantly, and other old friends were becoming worried enough to contact him too. Even Lucius cornered him for a hushed conversation when he visited the apocathary on Knockturn Alley a few weeks ago.

He waited until Minerva was talking with Filius Flitwick before hiding the rest of his eggs under his toast. Then he slipped the package under his arm and left.

He managed to make his way two-thirds of the way through the second year's essays on the uses and varieties of the Engorgement potion, before he had to put them aside in disgust and open Ann's package. There were several things inside. One was a thick envelope that appeared to be a letter from Ann, another larger envelope with Jack's handwriting on the front. Underneath those were two books, a Muggle paperback and a thin, bite-sized antique book on ancient uses of griffin claws – probably to tease him.

There were two additional bundles of papers, which he supposed to be manuscripts, which both pleased and surprised him. One was an outline and several chapters for a comprehensive history on the development, refinement, and current ethical issues of animagi (why on earth she picked _that_ topic out of any of millions he didn't know). The other appeared to be an autobiography. Excellent, he thought. He laughed out loud at her audacity. Writing an autobiography at twenty-five! Despite her age, Severus was sure she could fill several volumes already. He was glad she was sending him a copy. She would never publish it, of course – she was too private, and she had used too many illegal items (ahem, _potions_ – he still couldn't believe she had the nerve to use EXE, an explosive potion charmed to respond to voice commands, extremely dangerous and volatile – it was most definitely illegal at least in every country in Europe). But being a bibliophile, Ann certainly knew that should she write it and leave it to be discovered posthumously, she could potentially make the history books herself (if anybody would believe her outrageous exploits).

He had written plenty of studies and papers himself, but the enormity of Ann's new project seemed daunting. It was mean to think it, but he doubted she would ever sit down long enough to finish either of her books. It would be ridiculous to assume that Ann would put aside her regular research into ancient tomes – he had never known her to work on only one project exclusively for more than a day or two. But she seemed to be having fun – perhaps that was more important.

Anything to distract her from a certain Book that should remain unfound…

The front page of each manuscript contained a list of possible titles, most of them absurd. A suggestion for the animagi book was "Lions, Tigers, and Bears, Oh My" which he didn't understand at all. Perhaps these animals had some historical significance. One of the suggestions for the other was "The Autobiography of Doom." Come to think of it, she had managed to work the word "Doom" into at least five of her title suggestions.

He put aside the manuscripts for the time being and opened Jack's letter first.

_Dear Severus,_

_I miss the beach, but our new house is buetiful. We live in a valley between mountains, but they're really hills. There's a lake right down the slope at the end of our backyard. Ann says its poluted so I'm not allowed to swim there, but we go kayaking a lot. The town here is small. Ann says we've attracted too much attention already, so we'll be leaving soon. Ann is teaching me. I can transfigure a match into a needle and an onion into a potatoe. __I can also move things if I think hard. Ann tries to teach me history, but I don't care. Theres a trail I run down that goes between the hills. Oh, I run with Ann more now. She has to go slower for me to keep up, but I'm getting better. We're moving into an apartment next. Ann left and came back and said we're moving. I like the lake. I wish I could stay here. Could you ask Ann for us to stay here? I have a pet turtle name Sid. Write back I misse you. _

_Love,_

_Khalid_

Severus wrinkled his brow for a second. It was definitely in Jack's handwriting, but why did he sign it differently? Then he remembered the story Ann had told him one night. Khalid was Jack's original name. When he had been abandoned by his family and friends for being a wizard, he changed his name and went out on his own. He had introduced himself as Jack when Ann found him. Ann only knew his real name because, being a historian, she had searched for his past and found it. But she never called him anything but Jack. He was trying to distance himself by changing his name, she had explained, so she'd let him sort it out on his own.

But it struck Severus as unexpected. Was the melancholy boy he met over the summer changing for the better? What the significance of signing his name as Khalid instead of Jack? What was he trying to say?

As for the rest, there was nothing he could do about Ann's constant moving. Jack wanted a place he could call home – Severus understood how he felt – but he knew Ann wouldn't restructure her life. It would be too dangerous to settle into one place, the business she was in. She had entangled herself with too many ambitious witches and wizards.

He turned to Ann's letter and counted seven pages of her nearly illegible handwriting. She started off with a page and a half describing all the books she had bought and read, giving a critique of several. One of the Muggle fantasy books she described sounded intriguing. He considered stopping by Muggle London the next time he went to Diagon Alley.

After several more pages explaining various research (no details) and her various workouts (she was now running two to three times a day), she began to become more serious.

_Yakov__ has virtually disappeared,_ she wrote, _and that worries me. Ever since the uproar following the World Cup, the last record I can find of him is in (of all places) Budapest. _Dr. Yakov used to be Ann's academic ally, but had recently sold himself out to try to sabotage Ann's business. _I have heard that he spent some times at the summer home of a man called Igor Karkaroff, who incidentally (as I'm sure you know) is staying at Hogwarts. I don't think Yakov would have anything to do with the events of the Tournament, however; but he has been connected with suspicious circumstances._

Ann's letter was extremely informative. First, although Yakov (and Igor) had been less than innocent, Ann had spotted intelligence that neither was involved with the glitch in the Triwizard Tournament. Severus had suspected this was the case, but it was good to have it confirmed. Although he _still_ wouldn't put it past Potter's audacity – or moronically well-placed luck – to have entered himself as the fourth competitor.

Second, Yakov semed to be on the trail of the same book Ann had fancied finding – the Book of Death. Which meant, by implication, that Yakov was potentially behind the threatening owls Ann had been receiving (which was no surprise, in hindsight).

Third, Karkaroff's connection with Yakov might be the true reason behind the Durmstrang Headmaster's worries. Igor had been hinting to Severus that he was after something perhaps more ambitious than the Triwizard trophy – he had even hinted that there could be room for Severus in the deal, were he so inclined. Severus wouldn't put it past him; his 'colleague' was certainly ambitious enough to be involved.

But the stakes were high. Severus had pushed the book to the back of his mind, but he was certain Yakov hadn't. Ann wouldn't be foolish enough to throw away what research she had done – and Yakov would know this. Reading between the lines, Ann was keeping close tabs on her 'opponents.' He didn't doubt that if anyone looked to be on the verge of discovering the book's whereabouts, Ann would jump in and snatch it before anyone else could. But if they didn't she would likely leave it alone.

He didn't like the position this put Ann in. But he understood her reasoning – better to have the book herself, even destroy it than let someone like Yakov get his paws on it.

Ann's letter was full of such intelligence, but it left him with just as many questions as before. He read on as Ann's ramblings started to come to a close, going from hiking trips she and Jack had enjoyed to fish she had caught in the lake, ending with a blunt apology for making the letter so long.

_I would say I'm sorry for writing so much, but it's your choice to read it or chuck it in the trashcan – er, dustbin, whatever you call it._

She also added a quick note on Jack's schooling.

_He attends the local middle school in the morning four times a week. I teach him magical theory and he practices their practical application on his own. I'm worried that I can't really supervise him. It frustrates us both that he can't move as fast as he'd like – I don't want to risk his accidentally hurting himself, when I don't have magic to help in an emergency. _

He shook his head at that. Jack was smart, but young wizards really should be supervised during their first experimentation with magic. But it was no worse than Muggle born wizards, he supposed. At least Jack had the benefit of Ann's wisdom.

But there, at the very end of the letter, came the two sentences that made him more excited than the whole package put together:

_I'm coming to London on business this month. Would you like to meet me in Diagon Alley some weekend?_

As long as it wasn't a Hogsmeade weekend that required supervision from the four Heads of House, he was sure he'd be able to slip away for one weekend.

She signed it as simply Ann.

The Postscript, however, nearly made him lay an egg with indignation.

_P.S. Have heard from Sirius. I promised not to mention where he was. I'll probably be seeing him._

_P.P.S.__ Do you know a lot about Hippogriffs? I might be meeting one soon!_

He grit his teeth in anger. They had cast warding spells around a stretch of forest and let Buckbeak roam freely. Neither Ann nor Jack had seen him. (Although on second thought, Severus wouldn't bet money on what those two had managed to stick their noses in.)

"Drat!" He crumpled the last page into a ball and threw it across the room. What was Black playing at? What if some one saw him and Ann together? She would be sent to Azkaban along with him. The farther she stayed away from him the better.

In fact, he thought, it would be much better if she never saw, wrote, or even thought of Black again.

"Damnation!" He summoned the page back and used a quick spell to return it to a wrinkle-free state. If only Black had been caught trying to come back to the U.K.!

* * *

Almost a week had passed before Severus finally sat down to pen – er, quill a response. He didn't want to sound too eager, but he also didn't want to risk missing Ann when she came to London. He made two rough copies and had almost bitten his quill into shreds by the time he was ready to make the final draft.

He started off by addressing her concerns about Yakov. He had managed to slip Dr. Yakov's name into a conversation with Igor. Although Igor had immediately become guarded, he had hinted with a pleased expression that they were onto something big, and that there might be room to include Severus into the profits. Severus had declined in a way that would ensure Igor's continued offers. Igor wasn't stupid – Severus could be an asset in finding the book.

He moved on to more trivial things later in the letter: books he'd read lately, Goblin politics, how annoying his students were. He managed to slip in that she should stay away from Black because he was nothing but trouble. He hoped he didn't sound too bitter. He also mentioned that he would perhaps be free to meet her in Diagon Alley next weekend, despite his busy schedule.

He paused. Did he dare? Should he ask her? Albus had said at the last staff meeting that guests could be invited freely – within reason, of course. He mentally braced himself and wrote it quickly before he could change his mind.

_Hogwarts is hosting a Yule Ball on December 25th. You could come_

He scratched out the beginning of the last sentence.

_If you dressed like a witch, you could come as my guest. There is little chance of your being connected to your professional name. Perhaps I could also arrange to give you a tour of the Hogwarts library._

It was below the belt. He was almost overcome by his Slytherin-ness. Mention the library, mention the library – what else could coerce a bookworm into coming? Plus Ann was intrigued with magical places, she would certainly never turn down a chance to explore Europe's premier wizarding school. But he also had to warn her:

_Additionally, Karkaroff will be present. I can introduce you under a fake name and you may be able to draw more information out of him._

If Karkaroff let his guard down, they might even be able to get him drunk. The man didn't hold his alcohol very well. He reread the last paragraph and added:

_I hate balls. You can pretend to be my date so Minerva (the Transfiguration professor) doesn't try to force me to dance with her._

He was rather pleased with himself. He didn't want to sound desperate, but he hadn't had a date in over three years now. If he showed up alone he was sure Pomona (Sprout) and Minerva would take matters into their own hands. Ann was sure to hate dancing and parties as much as he did. They could glare at the dancers and have fun being miserable together.

A rare grin spread across his face. What's more, if Ann's letter was truthful, Black would eventually hear about it. He could already picture the look on the bastard's face, in whatever cave he was hiding out in these days.

* * *

A/N: Teacher's first names are taken from the Harry Potter Lexicon.


End file.
